Detectives have finally arrested the man behind new generation passport theft from job recruitment agencies.

The detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) arrested Stephen Odhiambo Obiero on Friday.


According to a police preliminary report, Obiero traded the passports to illegal foreign nationals in the country mainly from West Africa at a cost of only Sh22,000.

The detectives lay an ambush for Obiero and posed as pidgin speaking West Africans and boxed the suspect into a matatu along Mfangano Street where the deal happened.

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Little did Obiero know that he was dealing with multilingual undercover agents who spoke a mixture of Yoruba and mastered their broken English to perfectly fit the part.

No sooner had the deal been sealed than the detectives got out of character and clapped a pair of handcuffs on Obiero’s hands.

Stephen Odhiambo Obiero. PHOTO/DCI

The detectives recovered 22 passports mostly belonging to you female Kenyans who had deposited them at the job recruitment agencies for job opportunities in the Middle East.

Obiero is currently being held at the Central Police Station awaiting to be arraigned in court on Monday.

He is likely to be charged with knowingly having in his possession passports and cannot reasonably give a proper account of their possession Section 54 (1) (d) of citizenship and immigration Act No. 12 of 2011.

Detectives from the Immigration department are in the process of tracing the owners of the passports.