Every year, the money banks and other financial institutions lose to cybercriminals run into billions of shillings.
According to Serianu, a Pan-African cyber security firm, Kenya lost Sh30 billion to cyer criminals in 2018. The latest figures are sketchy but the cost have continued t increase over time due to the availability of high-speed internet among other things.
Late last year, the government officially unveiled the National Computer and Cyber Crimes Co-ordination Committee (NCCCC). NCCCC
will be tasked with consolidating action on the detection, investigation and prosecution of cybercrimes.
“The Cybercrime industry the last time I checked was about 13 billion US dollar industry and it has probably grown beyond that. Nations around the world are pumping resources into research because the truth of the matter is this, whether we like it or not, from now until probably we exit this universe our lives are going to be influenced by 3D’s, data, devices and designs,” Interior CS Fred Matiangi said during the launch.
Kenya also has the National Kenya Computer Incident Response Team – Coordination Centre (National KE-CIRT/CC), a multi-agency collaboration framework which is responsible for the national coordination of cyber security, as Kenya’s national point of contact on cyber security matters. This in accordance with the provisions of the Kenya Information and Communications Act.
On Monday, a Twitter user Mercy Mwicarly (@MMwicarly) lost money to some fraudsters posing as staff of internet service provider, Zuku.
Below is how she narrated her ordeal:
So today I got scammed on Mpesa, as a cybersec personnel I thought to myself I am “immune” to these scams, I mean have done lots of awareness trainings and read lots of threads on Fraud in Kenya. So here is what happened
All started with @Zuku_WeCare not reconnecting my account after payment (for like 24 hrs) so decided to DM then, they responded asking me to share my number which I did on the comment (I know this was red flag one)
I shared my number on comment which got me to scammers radar, on their second comment
@Zuku_WeCare they were specific I DM them my number, which I did and deleted my number from the first comment, which was already too late. Now I was already expecting Zuku to call, it was already past 830am which means really need to get working all I wanted at this point was to get connected back to internet, and yes I got the call, but not from Zuku, but from 0202040004, scammers number.
At that point I had no idea of the number, I should probably get true caller, not sure how helpful it is, (any comments on the same?) So the Guy introduces himself as David from Zuku and apologizes on the inconveniences caused and here’s there to help.
He asks if I had power outage in my area at the time of account recharge cause ts another major causes of links dropping, of course not. Tells me to power off my router so that they reverse the payment from their end and we repay so that the link can pick up.
This got my eyebrows raised but the whole night been trying to call Zuku customer care all with one response, we are checking from our end will give you a call back which I never, so probably this guys fix will work, only that it fixed me
To the scam, makes me cringe to even talk abt it, at this point I should have already been alarmed about the whole process but let me share for anyone else likely to fall for this, or add this to know hows of scam happens
Guy tells me to dial some code (unfortunately cannot remember (*xxx*x*x*x#) (if anyone been through this or knows what the code is and what it does can share, probably @Safaricom_Care
can shed some light on the same as well.
Ideally the code was suppose to initiate the amount paid reversal from Zuku😢, but no this literally drains all your Mpesa balance to the scammer. Not sure it’s a bug or somn, cause I did not enter any amount or number to sent to.
What happens? They ask you to use pochi la biashara (I know at this point I should have long hanged up, but how else would I have been used as a vessel for Mpesa Scam(s) awareness 🤣)
They give you a code apparently my area code to enter on amount and I think recipient as well.
The code is to be entered instead of amount, and they really do insist instead of a number you only need the code to initiate the reversal from their end, @Safaricom_Care really need to shed light on how this happens.
We all know happens after that, all money in Mpesa gets transferred to some number, remember you do not even put amount, and just like that all is gone😢
Here’s a receipt of the transaction:
Of course I called Safaricom customer care to explain my fall, all I got was report the number to 333, and of course go to police, but yeah my money’s gone 😢
Just curious @Safaricom_Care what’s the whole point of reversing if the recipient has to confirm it?
Others shared their experience at the hands of cyber criminals:
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