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The American couple held in custody for 35 days at Muthaiga Police Station in connecting with the hacking of Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) system and stealing of Sh40 billion were deported to the USA on Tuesday night.
Larry Peckham and his wife Denis Hilton were put on a 10pm Lufthansa Airlines flight by Kenyan immigration officials.
The couple had been held in custody on the hacking of the KRA system but the charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. It however emerged that they were in the country illegally and therefore continued to be held at Muthaiga Police Station pending deportation, until Tuesday night.
“We were arrested because police thought we were involved in cybercrime, since we had communicated with the man they said was a main suspect, but police later said they did not have any evidence linking us to cybercrime,” Peckham said in an earlier interview.
The man Peckham had communicated with was Calvin Ogola, one of the suspected hackers still in custody. The communication between Peckham and Ogola was allegedly about Sh40 million Peckham had been defrauded by a Kenyan, and Ogola was to help him recover the money. “For three years, I have not been able to solve the mystery and someone referred me to Calvin Ogola whom he said was a banker who would help me with solving the mystery. I had a 10-minute meeting with him. I had never met him before and when we did, he told me that he was actually an IT expert,” said Peckham.