Wangiri Fraud: What to do when a strange foreign number calls you

What to do when you get a Wangiri call. Photo: Courtesy.

Have you ever received a call from an unknown foreign number that only rang once? Did you return that missed call? If you have, the chances are that you might have lost money. Wangiri fraud is the term used to describe the 'one ring and cut' calls that fraudsters use to con people with hopes of making a profit. On Thursday, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations took to Twitter to educate Kenyans on the Wangiri fraud.

"Wangiri fraud entails receiving missed calls from international numbers you don't recognise on a mobile/fixed-line phone. The fraudsters generating the calls hope that their expensive international numbers will be called back so that they can profit." The term Wangiri is Japanese for "one (ring) and cut." And as the name would imply, it's a genuinely international scam, with victims distributed across the world. Warnings about the scam have appeared in Kenyan, the U.K., Canadian, Irish, and New Zealand media, among others," said the DCI.