Six others arrested in SACCO electronic fraud

 

Just when you thought that all the culprits of electronic fraud were arrested, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), has today announced that they have arrested more suspects.

Today’s arrest brings the number of suspects to nine after the three, a Ugandan citizen, Gabantu Patrick Emmanuel and two Kenyans, Zahra Ahmed and Abdullazac Rajab were yesterday arrested for allegedly defrauding Savings and Credit Co-operative Societies (SACCOs) in the country.

The nine, Gabantu Patrick Emmanuel, Zahra Ahmed, Abdullazac Rajab, Jason Amayo, Arnold Orupia Okello, Silas Shihundu, John Wangila Sylvanus Nyapera & Rodgers Wanyonyi are accused of defrauding Kenyan SACCOs: Safaricom, Bamburi and Stima.

According to police, they managed to illegally obtain a total of Ksh. 54 million from the said SACCOs. The first arrest of the three was made on Tuesday at Portal Place House in Nairobi and several passports recovered from them.

The Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) George Kinoti earlier warned banks and mobile service providers over financial fraud which has been on the rise, saying cases like this are mostly perpetrated by their own employees.

 

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Mr. Kinoti had earlier this year urged financial institutions to conduct thorough background checks on potential and current employees saying that the sophisticated syndicate of criminals have widened their dragnet to Savings and Credit Co-operative Societies where internal controls and risk mitigation measures are weak or non-existent altogether from commercial banks, which have been the main target.

Cybersecurity consultancy firm Serianu Limited last month warned SACCOs against operating IT systems without proper cyber security systems, saying it made them easy targets for tech-savvy “thieves”.

According to the firm, the Ksh. 443 billion SACCO industry risks collapsing if urgent measures are not taken to address the security lapses. Serianu conducted a nationwide representative poll where 100 top officials of SACCOs participated found that 50% of them did not see the essence of investing in cyber security.

 

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The firm’s Managing director William Makatani said that allowing employees to bring in their own devices to work was the greatest threat and called for enactment of company policies that deterred use of private devices for official work.

The Cybercrime Investigation Unit said about Ksh. 17 billion was lost to hackers in 2016, with theft of credit or debit card data and financial scams, bank salami attacks and hacking of the mobile banking systems being t

They suspects were held at the CID headquarters for questioning and were due in court today.

 

 

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