Kenyan Man Arrested for Conning a Car Seller of Sh150,000 While Posing a White Woman

Detectives in Ongata Rongai have arrested a suspect who conned a car seller Sh150,000 while posing as a white woman.

Bob Nyongesa, disguised as a white woman named Ryan Britney, contacted the owner of the car through a popular online site (jiji.co.ke) posing as a potential buyer.

Nyongesa, who claimed to live in Narok, asked the seller to send him more photos of the Mercedes Benz that was going for Sh1.4 million, before traveling to Nairobi to finalize the deal.

“Convinced that the prospective client was a serious buyer, Ali sent him more photos including the interior and other parts of the machine," the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) says in a report.

On the day he was supposed to travel to Nairobi to seal the deal, the suspect phoned Ali with "bad news", claiming that he had hit a herd of cattle belonging to Maasai herdsmen.

He said he needed Sh150,000 to compensate the machete-wielding herdsmen, who were baying for his blood.

Nyongesa even sent Ali images of livestock carcasses sprawled on a road and her purportedly damaged vehicle and appealed to him to send her the money and promised to refund once she accessed her bank in Nairobi, as she made payments for the vehicle.

Ali sent the money and that was the last time he heard from “Ryan Britney” as all calls to her phone number went unanswered. 

It was not until his arrest on Saturday that Ali learned he had dealt with Nyongesa, a fraudster with previous run-ins with the law and whose criminal record “stinks to high heaven.”

He was arrested in Ongata Rongai by detectives based at DCI Langata and several SIM cards, laptops and mobile phones forming part of his tools of trade recovered. 

Nyongesa, who previously served time in Kamiti and Kodiaga prisons for fraud-related offenses, is being held at Langata police station pending arraignment on Monday.