The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) has arrested a suspect in connection to a case where a man lost Ksh 540,000 from his bank account while taking dinner at an Eldoret hotel.
Harun Kigera is suspected to be part of a gang that tricked the victim into unknowingly revealing his Pin number when they joined him at the table where he was sitting during the fateful encounter.
According to the DCI, three individuals, including a lady pretending to be in distress joined the victim and the lady asked him to send her Ksh 2000 to her Airtel lie, in exchange for cash, a request to which he obliged.
It was not until the following morning that the victim realized that he had been hacked, with over half a million shillings sent to different phone numbers directly from his bank account.
“…the victim realized the amount missing from his bank account, with Ksh. 400,000 transferred to various phone numbers, & Ksh.140,000 to the suspect’s bank acc,” the DCI revealed, adding that the only way this was possible was if the gang mastered his PIN while he was carrying out the Ksh. 2000 transaction.
The DCI has now appealed to the public to avoid granting requests for virtual-hard cash exchange, which is how fraudsters access personal login information into bank accounts.
“The DCI takes this opportunity to warn members of the Public against this kind of Fraud where people are being duped into online transactions in exchange for cash money, & thereby innocently revealing their PIN & Phone Numbers which enable the fraudsters to swap their lines,” the Directorate added.