Just when we thought conmanship had taken a break, fake street boys take advantage of Kenyans’ naivety and ignorance.
Who could’ve thought that people can pretend to be fake street children on national television?
Street boys who wowed Kenyans on social media with their singing talent have defrauded unsuspecting Kenyans Ksh 493,000.
Their conmanship game was expose by renowned philanthropist Ndungu Nyoro who was also the first person to catapult them to stardom.
According to Nyoro, suspicion arose during his Facebook Live video on the boys with some Kenyans mentioning that the men who were wearing dirty clothes had deliberately applied oil on their faces to fake the street life.
“In the process of doing the video, I sensed that they had applied the greasing oil on purpose and tried to probe them. However, they were smart in their answers,” Nyoro recounted.
“It’s been a process trying to find out the truth. Now I have come to a realization they were not honest. They purposefully did that to attract public attention,” the philanthropist regretted.
Nyoro revealed that he had subsequently opened a M-Changa paybill to assist the “talented street boys” which raised more than Ksh 290,000.
“This was money raised by false pretence. There was additional Ksh 203,000 that was donated by a church in Nairobi after watching their story,” he added.
When they were interviewed, they had chokora accent (sluggish intonation common among street urchins) which mysteriously disappeared after a day.
“They had ‘reformed’ day after and had normal conversation. Even the oil which was deliberately applied on their faces lasted for a day,” Nyoro noted.
The men also attempted to defraud a Kenyan in diaspora by impostering a popular male gospel artist claiming to be stuck in a project.
Nyoro equally recounted that he had spent a whole day in studio recording music for the “street boys”.
The music, however, ended up being someone else songs recorded in 2014 which they had lifted from YouTube.
“That they chose to do gospel songs with all these fakery leaves me in pain. Has gospel industry sunk this low?” he posed.
Following the twist of events, Nyoro indicated that he would no longer be party “a process marred with dishonesty and fraud”.
“I will instruct M-Changa to REVERSE all cash back to the donors. The donors can choose whether to continue supporting this fraud or channel elsewhere to their case of choice,” he concluded.