A woman in Nyeri believes witchcraft was one of the reasons three scammers made away with her Sh1 million.
Almost three years after the incident, Jane Karimi is still lamenting over the loss at the hands of three ‘prophetesses’ who took her money in the pretext they would pray for her daughter who lives abroad.
Karimi, a senior technical officer at an NGO in Nyeri, believes the fraudsters used dark forces to make her gullible.
“They approached me in town as I was coming out of a bank and told me that many families had their children abroad, but most returned in coffins,” Karimi told a court in Nyeri as she gave testimony against Margaret Wambui whom she accused of conning her.
Karimi had mistook their knowledge of her daughter, whom she hadn’t told anyone about, as divine intervention.
“They were dressed in church attire; a head scarves and white dresses. I mistook them to be prayer warriors from a local prophet known as Dr Gikonyo,” she said.
In the con that took three days of prayers, the fraudsters allegedly told Karimi that money was the root cause of evil that was lurking in her family.
On the day they met, she claims she was told to buy an egg and put it in her bed as she slept.
“When we met next, the egg was broken and inside it was a Sh200 note, human hair, a piece of cloth in a knot and blades of grass,” narrated Karimi.
Shocked, she said she believed that her daughter would be in deep trouble if she did not have the women pray for her.
The two women reportedly asked Karimi to meet them in their car where they would perform a miracle to cleanse and protect her family.
To ward off the evil, Karimi said she withdrew all the money from her bank accounts to be prayed for.
“While we were in the car, we prayed until smoke started coming out of my body, which led me to believe that what they had told me was true because they were prophets who performed miracles,” Karimi told the court. “I was bewitched. I gave out the money,” she added.
She said she withdrew Sh600,000 from her account at Barclays Bank on June 26, 2013 to prevent misfortune befalling her daughter who was studying abroad.
Two days late, added, she withdrew a further Sh103,000 and Sh242,000 from two different bank accounts.
“I was told to wrap the money in a cloth and make seven knots similar to the piece of cloth that came out of the egg,” she narrated.
After the prayers, she said she was told that the person who had ill intentions towards her family would be revealed.
Karimi allegedly wrapped the over Sh900,000 in the cloth and tied it into knots, but unbeknown to her, the money had been swapped for pieces of paper, receipts and envelopes.
“I did not have someone accompany me as a witness because this was not a transaction. This was a spiritual matter and it demanded some secrecy on my part,” she said, adding that, “I did not believe they would con me because we were talking about God.”
Karimi was given back the cloth with the pieces of paper wrapped inside and instructed to open it the following day and give it as tithe inside a white envelope, only for her to discover that the women had swapped her money for papers. She said that reported the matter leading to the arrest of the accused.
