New con alert! Woman narrates how fraudters almost stole her M-Pesa float
A Kenyan woman by the name Wangari MM exposed how two potential customers to her M-Pesa and chemical selling businesses almost wiped out her mobile money vendor cash float after obtaining her phone number.
According to Ms Wangari, she runs an M-Pesa business in the same location where she sells chemicals and perfumes. A female customer came to purchase chemicals and because she allegedly had no phone to confirm the amount of chemicals she had been sent to purchase, she asked Wangari to lend her a phone to call the chemical buyer. This was how the foundation of the con game was laid.
“I have an M-Pesa shop alongside the chemicals. Yesterday, a woman came to buy bleach chemicals. She said she had been sent by someone to get them on their behalf and she doesn’t know the quantity to carry. She asked me to help her with my phone so she could call her friend and ask. (I) Gave her my phone ad later, I received a call from 0722000000. Apparently from “Safaricom” telling me they want to carry out an update.
I believed at first and a few minutes later, they gave me instructions on how to deposit. I then knew I’m being conned. By the way, the lady saved her contact with 0722000000. She was asking for every other item in the shop without bargaining. Also she came with another guy. When the woman was buying bleach, the other person would be asking for perfume…buying time for her to save the number on my phone. I would have been conned my entire float yesterday. Also they were two, they were calling together as one pretended to be an administrator and that they are carrying out an update so they would close my line. This is the number that woman called so that they could get my phone number, 0797707598,” narrated Ms Wangari.
This could mean that once the woman called her accomplice, she saved her number as 0722000000, the official registered Safaricom customer care number, instead of writing out her name as is common practice.
Her narration left a chill among her audience as some revealed they had also been conned in the same way or almost lost money to such a con.
“A friend of mine lost Sh 300k in Nakuru to these conmen,” said Muhammud Onyango.
“Waah! These scammers come up with new ideas everyday. For me, they stole Sh 96,567 and this made me to almost get killed,” added Maxwell Otieno.
Several other Kenyans narrated how they lost vast sums of money to these M-Pesa scams, some between Sh 50,000 and Sh 100,000; narrating how their lives were up ended in the aftermath.
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