Inside intriguing, secret life of Mirema shooting victim Samuel Mugo Mugota

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) Corporate Communications & Public Affairs Unit has unearthed shocking details about the victim of the broad daylight shooting incident that happened on Monday at Mirema Estate in Kasarani, Nairobi.

A deep dive into the DCI criminal database revealed the victim Samuel Mugo Mugota lived his life on the edge after details about his dark life were discovered deep within the DCI records.

It has turned out that Mugota was a criminal and started his wayward operations back in 2011 when he used to steal from unsuspecting victims at ATMs in various banks before graduating into a full-time thug who hired the use of beautiful and expensive-looking women to run his trade.

Mugota was the head of a notorious syndicate in the city that operated with the precision of a mafia organisation that hires the services of those beautiful women to spike drinks of unsuspecting victims at various high-end entertainment establishments.

The deceased was a multi-millionaire with several real estate properties scattered across the city, a fleet of vehicles and 7 wives all living lavishly from proceeds of stupefied patrons in clubs most frequented by revellers.

Much to the surprise of his wives, none of them knew that Mugota lived a double life. 

So lucrative was Mugota’s trade that he had recruited over 50 beautiful women into his ‘pishori’ administering trade, which has led to broken marriages, left many men admitted to hospitals and others dead from an overdose of a stupefying drug only identified as ‘Tamuu’ supposed to be administered to patients suffering from mental disorders.

After 11 years in the highly dangerous trade that has in recent days targeted patrons looking for entertainment in high-end establishments including top public servants, businessmen, politicians and men of the cloth, Mugota seemed to have made more enemies than friends.

Detectives suspect that one of the women he had employed or an accomplice must have given him into criminals after a deal went sour. According to Economic Crimes detectives who have previously handled his cases, Muvota was arrested over 30 times in the past 11 years on fraud-related charges and had been in and out of almost all the courts in the city and in Kiambu County. 

On most occasions, he would approach the complainants with a refund for their money and the cases would collapse. He was widely known by cyber security specialists in the banking sector for the many times he fraudulently accessed clients’ accounts at city ATM’s sweeping the accounts clean. 

Detectives believe that the thug worked with crooked banking officials who assisted him to clean up accounts in a matter of minutes. He particularly had a preference for Co-operative bank ATMs.

The slippery thug also had connections with rogue officers at several police stations and whenever detectives launched a manhunt for him, he would be tipped off in time. 

Mugota began his trade in 2011 by hanging around city ATMs and offering to assist customers who had difficulties withdrawing money from their accounts. Working with crooked banking officials who would jam the teller machines once a client inserted his ATM card, Mugota would approach the client offering to assist. 

He would insert the client’s card then pretend to be facing away and ask the client to key in his password and first confirm the balance before withdrawing the amount they wished.

However, since the machines eject the ATM card first, he would get hold of the card as the unsuspecting client waited for the cash.

At this point, Mugota would swap the card with another and hand the happy client a fake card.

Woe unto the account holder if the account had a fat balance since Mugota, would then visit different ATM booths withdrawing cash until the accounts were swept clean.

In a well-orchestrated scheme, Mugota would strike past 5 in the evening when he was sure that account holders would not walk back to their banks to inquire what the victims of the well-coordinated fraud visited their banks the following day to make inquiries into the fraudulent transactions, they would be met with apologies from equally hapless tellers. 

Mugota who was clearly ahead of the cyber security experts in the banking sector took advantage of products introduced by banks to make transactions easy for their clients.

In 2018, at an ATM in Kayole, he transferred Sh700,000 in a single transaction from an account of a woman he was assisting through Pesalink to one of his fraudulent accounts, leaving a balance of only Sh700. 

The woman had walked to the ATM booth to check whether a loan she had applied for at the bank had been deposited in her account when she met the Mugota. When she learnt of what had happened, she collapsed and died.

Such was the modus operandi of Samuel Mugota, who at the time of his death had graduated to being the mastermind of the 'pishori' syndicate in the country, targeting moneyed patrons in the hope of a happy ending. 

But the men ended up drugged and some were found by their families naked wearing condoms, while inside their cars outside the gates of their homes.