Safaricom Staff, JKUAT Student Arrested in Crackdown on SIM Card Fraud Syndicate

Two suspects have been arrested in connection to the SIM card swap fraud that has seen Kenyan mobile cash service users lose millions of shillings.

The two, a Safaricom employee and a student from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture Technology (JKUAT) were arrsted by officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations( DCI).

Maurice Musoti, a Safaricom official and Rian Obaga Nyagaka; a fourth-year Bachelor of Science in Electronic Engineering student at JKUAT were arrested in Nairobi on Friday.

An Apple laptop, 2,160 unused Safaricom SIM cards, 44 used Safaricom SIM cards, 5 Till Agent numbers, three Mpesa Safaricom books, an internet booster router and 2 mobile phones; a blackberry and Samsung J7 were recovered during the arrest.

The arrests follows an uproar from Kenyans over incidents of fraudulent SIM card swapping in the past few days.

In a statement Safaricom's director of risk management, Nicholas Mulila warned users to protect their personal details and to never share any information with any questionable callers posing as the company's employees.

“Safaricom has noted growing concerns from the public on social engineering and theft of customer information leading to fraudulent SIM swaps,”read the statement in part.

“We wish to advise customers to report any suspected interference with their SIM Cards or theft of personal details to us by calling 100 or 200, or via a text message to 333 for assistance. Customers should also report these cases to law enforcing agencies with urgency’’ added Mulila.

“As a precautionary measure against social engineering, enabled by sharing of personal details, we would also like to remind our customers to safeguard information such as SIM and M-PESA PINs, dates of birth and national identity numbers,” he said.