Safaricom staff in court over Sh300m extortion attempt

Two Safaricom #ticker:SCOM employees have been charged with demanding Sh300 million from the company by threats.

Appearing before Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi Monday, the duo denied the charge of computer fraud and demanding money by threats.

Simon Billy Kinuthia and Brian Njoroge Wamatu also denied illegally copying and transferring privileged information on a subscriber, from the company’s database and sharing it with an unauthorised person.

It is alleged that they unlawfully copied and transferred privileged a subscriber’s data information from Safaricom database to a person identified as Mr Charles Njuguna Kimani with intent to defraud. They allegedly committed the offence between May 1 and June 7.

The two were accused of later demanding the Sh300 million from Safaricom with intent to steal.

The court ordered the suspects to deposit Sh1 million cash bail each to secure their release and to be reporting to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations’ Serious Crimes Unit once a week. Their lawyer argued that the two risk losing their jobs if they do not report to work in the next 48 hours.

The case will be heard on July 16.