DCI officers on Friday apprehended a Safaricom employee and a Jomo Kenyatta University student believed to be behind the SIM card Swap fraud.
The telco employee Maurice Musoti and the fourth year student of BSc Electronic Engineering Rian Obaga Nyagaka were arrested and an Apple laptop, 2,160 unused Safaricom SIM cards, 44 used Safaricom SIM cards, and five Agent Till numbers recovered, the DCI has confirmed.
Also in their possession were three Mpesa record books, two mobile phones – a blackberry and Samsung J7 and a router.
Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) on Thursday issued a public warning concerning the SIM swap scammers, instead of instituting measures to curb them.
In an investigative piece by Kahawa Tungu, it was revealed that Safaricom staff and CID officers are deeply involved in the scams where scammers based in Bomet County’s Mulot town defraud subscribers millions.
According to sources within the tight knit criminal network, CID officers based in Nairobi and Mulot are complicit in the daily scamming schemes targeting subscribers with millions in their M-Pesa accounts.
Read: How Lucy Mwari’s Account was Cleaned by an Equity Bank Employee
Safaricom did however warn subscribers against fraudsters who steal cash from their Mpesa accounts through SIM swap.
“We would like to remind our customers to safeguard information such as SIM and M-Pesa PINs, dates of birth and national ID numbers,” Nicholas Mulila, director for risk management, said in a statement.
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