Detectives pursue cyber fraudsters targeting retirees

Detectives are investigating a new trend where cyber fraudsters are targeting retired civil servants and defrauding them of their lump sum retirement benefits a few days after it is deposited into their accounts.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) cyber crime unit says they are swamped with complaints where retirees have been swindled of their cash by the fraudsters.

According to the police, the fraudsters are spoofing banks’ customer care telephone numbers or using numbers that are similar to banks’ numbers, normally with just one different digit.

“This makes it easy to convince the retirees that they are dealing with legitimate customer care officers when they are cons,” said an officer in the investigating team.

The team is investigating possibilities that the gangs are getting information from sources within banks when a retiree receives lump sum deposits into their accounts.

After making calls to their targets and convincing them they are bank employees, the fraudsters then make a transfer of a small sum, usually between Sh100,000 and Sh150,000 to a number they identify.

“The next step involves calling the victim with a spoofed number and introducing themselves as bank customer care officials. Sometimes the victims are even told to confirm the bank’s official customer care if they are in doubt.”

“The gang then tells the victim that they have noticed suspicious activities in their account and they want to help them secure their cash before it is all withdrawn,” added the police handling the cases.

Having gained the confidence of the victim, the criminals go ahead to instruct the victim to use their banks’ USSD code and transfer the cash in batches through a money transfer system to bank accounts read out by the criminals.

“By the end of the ordeal, the victim realizes that they have transferred all their money to accounts in other banks that they have no control over. When they reach out to customer care of the banks, they realize it was not customer care that had called them.”

 The DCI has advised Kenyans to be careful when dealing with strange calls.

“The criminals are not sleeping. They are making efforts on a daily basis to defraud their targets and that is why we urge caution, especially on people introducing themselves as bank officials as a way of addressing the menace,” DCI boss Mohamed Amin said.

He said they have so far arrested some of the fraudsters involved in the new trend, and efforts to get more suspects are ongoing.