A man who has been posing as an MP aspirant for Buuri Constituency in Meru County faces Sh260 million fraud charges following a probe and arrest by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI).
This was after the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) approved the fraud charges against the suspect identified as Eliud Gilisho alias Eliud Limuyu.
Detectives said the fraud involved manipulation of the victim.
Limuyu applied a divide and rule tactic to divide the victim’s partners as he defrauded him over claims of being able to among others invent a weapon detector.
Tony Ketter who is the victim is a businessman in ICT sector who also operates from South Africa and Angola.
He told the police the suspect had approached him through his former female employee Samali Kirika, who is a Ugandan and believed to be a willing co-conspirator in the scheme, and lied to him he was about to invent a weapon detector and all he wanted was small funding for its development before it could be rolled out.
What followed was a chain of deception and conning where the suspect managed to access the victim’s trust as a way of getting more money from him.
Limuyu impersonated several personalities, investigators say.
He fabricated elaborate digital personas, masquerading as high-net-worth investors from the US and France to legitimize the phantom technology.
They communicated with an interest of investing in the technology, which turned out to be a scheme to defraud Ketter.
They could often send emails to the victim while talking about huge amounts of investments into the said technology.
He claimed the Americans wanted to kill the victim and steal his technology. Operating under the fabricated threat of assassination, Ketter was forced into isolation, allowing Limuyu to exert total control over his finances and movements.
The victim told police the man had conned him up to Sh260 million.
The victim told police he had to abandon his business in South Africa and came back to Kenya where the suspect and his accomplices were now conspiring with other Kenyans to target his family vast land in Nandi County with the intention of defrauding him.
The victim fought off speculators who targeted his land in the area.
He later recorded a statement with DCI Serious Crimes Unit who investigated and found the suspect culpable for the accusations.
Ketter added the suspect had even been threatening him with more dire consequences if he did not drop the charges.
The suspect has declared interest in the Buuri constituency seat in the coming polls.
He was arrested Monday and locked up at Muthaiga cells pending arraignment.
Police investigations have revealed he has a forged Israel passport with several others visas including that of the USA. The DCI has since sought clarification from the two countries Embassies.
It has also emerged that his dates of birth in the identification documents are different from those in the passport.
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