MPESA shops are steadily becoming a criminal’s first-choice hideout even as the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) intensify their commitment to ridding the country of crime.
The revelation comes less than a week after a Kondele Police station Corporal, James Lekamoi Sajini stormed an MPESA agent shop and stole the cash before escaping.
This was one of the many instances where police officers were accused of extorting money from the public, but as an emerging trend, the cops are just but players in the wider criminal enterprise that now have the MPESA shops as their go-to place.
One such instance is a case involving seven aliens who were busted crammed inside a small MPESA shop in Kiamaiko.
When a police raid unearthed the foreigners, details emerged that they had apparently been smuggled into the country before being dumped in the area in the dead of the night.
The foreigners were expected to picked by their would-be acquaintances sometime later into a safer zone for “processing”.
A judge handling the case, Chief Magistrate Heston Nyaga Monday ruled that the seven be detained at Muthaiga Police station for five more days awaiting charges on Wednesday.
During the bust, police said the MPESA tenant had escaped, leaving the seven trapped in his shop. A couple of phones and passports would later be recovered from the shop.
Detectives said they had transferred the phones to the Cybercrime division for forensic analysis even as they hold the suspects for more days.
“We intend to use the suspects as state prosecution witnesses as their evidence is very crucial. The suspects are believed to have been sneaked into the country with a promise to be offered jobs”, said an investigator.
“If they are released, they might be trafficked again and tracing might be impossible,” the investigator added.