Two Kenyans, Ugandan arrested for stealing Sh70m from Saccos

Three suspects, among them a Ugandan national, have been arrested for stealing Ksh 70 million from various Kenyan Saccos through electronic fraud.

Zahra Ahmed, Abdullazac Rajab and  the Ugandan, Gabantu Patrick Emmanuel were arrested on Tuesday afternoon by detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI). Several passports were recovered. Among the Saccos that fell victim are Safaricom, Bamburi and Stima, the DCI said on its Twitter handle.

Financial institutions, including mobile money operators, in the country have in recent years been losing billions of shillings to fraudsters, who include foreigners.

#ARRESTED|Mr.Gabantu Patrick Emmanuel,a #Ugandan national & two Kenyans; Zahra Ahmed and Abdullazac Rajab have this afternoon been arrested by @DCI_Kenya Detectives for defrauding Kenyan SACCOs(Safaricom, Bamburi,Stima & others) millions of shillings. Several Passports recovered. pic.twitter.com/b4hJNTNt2z

— DCI KENYA (@DCI_Kenya) November 13, 2018

In September, two Nigerians and a Tanzanian national were arrested for fraudulent activities that saw banks lose huge amounts of money.

The arrest of Uduebor Uche,  Adebowaje Oluwafemi and Omari Abby Kajuna saw detectives recover ATM cards, laptops and cheque books,among others. Most of the money defrauded from the local banks was withdrawn outside Kenya.

According to estimates, between Ksh 15 billion and Ksh 20 billion is lost annually through fraud. The threat saw the financial sector spent Ksh 21.2 billion on cyber security measures in 2017.