Yesterday, the DCI arrested a fraud suspect who was believed to have been operating an M-Pesa mobile phone scam syndicate. The story goes deeper as they were arrested with bags full of SIM cards and found to have hacked into the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

He was arrested in Juja by agents from Crime Research and Intelligence Bureau. They were supported by Safaricom’s fraud investigations team and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology security officers.

DCI Arrest Fake M-Pesa Customer Care Attendant

According to the DCI, his arrest followed a joint operation by detectives & Safaricom investigators. This is after the suspect scammed an MPESA agent an unspecified amount of money.

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The fraudster masquerading as an M-PESA customer care attendant, called the agent & lured her into dialing unspecified codes. Before the agent realized that she was in a phony call, she had already lost cash from her money lending account. The money was sent to an MPESA account belonging to one of the fraudulently acquired SIM cards. All before being transferred to an account at Cooperative bank. – DCI 

Aside from this, the DCI believe he scammed other members of the public millions of shillings through this pretentious scheme. They were also found with bags full of SIM cards belonging to Safaricom, Airtel and Telkom.

Hacking Into The IEBC

Earlier, the suspects had hacked into the (IEBC) database, and acquired personal details of 61,617 registered voters from a county in western Kenya. DCI says that the data contains names of voters, their ID numbers and dates of birth.

Using the personal details, the suspects then contact different wireless carriers and scam the customer service agents. They convince them that they the actual the true sim holders and the M-Pesa attendants grant them full access.