Safaricom staff and Jkuat student arrested over SIM card fraud

Some of the items recovered from the suspects. [Courtesy]

Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officers have arrested two people in connection to the ballooning fraud cases involving SIM cards.

Safaricom employee Maurice Musoti and an Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) engineering student Rian Obaga Nyagaka were arrested on Friday July 21.

#ARREST: Mr. Maurice Musoti an employee of #safaricom & Rian Obaga Nyagaka, a fourth year student at #JKUAT studying BSc.Electronic Engineering were arrested yesterday in connection with the #simcard Fraud. pic.twitter.com/21LlsovnD7

— DCI KENYA (@DCI_Kenya) July 21, 2018

Detectives say they found the suspects with 2,160 unused Safaricom SIM cards, 44 used cards, five till agent numbers, three MPESA Safaricom booklets and an internet booster router.

A laptop, two mobile phones; a blackberry and Samsung J7 were also netted in the swop.

The arrests followed in Communications Authority’s warning to Kenyans against sharing personal identification numbers with strangers pretending to help them.

“Personally Identifiable information refers to any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, such as mobile money pin, national identity number, bank account pin, password, date of birth among others,” explained Wangusi Francis, Director General Communications Authority.

How do they do it

Instances of SIM Card Swap Fraud begin with fraudster making a call pretending to be an employee of a mobile network operator.

The fraudster further asks the unsuspecting mobile subscriber to share their personally identifiable information such as national ID number, mobile money PIN, or SIM card PIN. After obtaining the information the fraudsters then goes ahead to swap the sim card thereby gaining access to all sim services including mobile money transfer, mobile and internet banking , voice calls , SMS, data services among others.