A 68-year-old Nairobi trader has been dragged to court for allegedly manipulating M-Pesa transaction messages to dupe her landlady into believing she had paid rent for seven months, when in reality, she had sent as little as Sh1.
Jemima Mueni Mutua is accused of defrauding Florence Ng’ang’a, the owner of business premises at Mandela Court in Chokaa, Nairobi, of Sh129,839 between November 2024 and June 2025.
The conniving woman allegedly deposited minimal amounts ranging from Sh1 to Sh20 into Ng’ang’a’s M-Pesa account, then edited the transaction messages to reflect full rent payments of Sh20,000 per month.
The court heard that in one instance, the elderly woman craftily deposited Sh2 and altered the message to appear as Sh20,000 before forwarding it to the landlady as rent payment.
This pattern went undetected for months, with the landlady relying on the fake texts as proof of payment owed to her.
The deception only came to light when Ng’ang’a noticed a suspicious message indicating a Sh2 transaction and requested an M-Pesa statement from Safaricom.
The statement revealed that all the supposed rent payments were, in fact, coins disguised as substantial payments through edited texts. Alarmed by the findings, Ng’ang’a reported the matter to the police, leading to Mutua’s arrest.
When she was first arraigned before Principal Magistrate Renee Kitangwa at the Makadara Law Courts, Mutua pleaded guilty. The prosecution asked for more time to present evidence, including the falsified M-Pesa messages.
However, during a later appearance on June 23, the accused dramatically changed her plea to not guilty. She pleaded for leniency, saying she would prefer to repay the lost funds instead of serving jail time.
The magistrate granted her a cash bail of Sh20,000, with the case set for mention on July 8, when the court will determine the next steps in the trial.