A Kenyan national has been jailed for 20 years in the United States after he was found guilty of defrauding an American firm, Fairfax County, based in Washington DC, Sh7.6 million.
The scam was found to have began in August 1 last year, where Jeffrey Sila Ndungi and his said colleagues wrote to Fairfax, while pretending to be Dell Computers Company based in Texas, to reroute its pending payments.
Then, Fairfax which had a running multimillion dollar computer supply deals for its schools had a debt owed to Dell which was almost due and therefore, sent the money in batches as was demanded by the fraudsters.
On September 10, 2019, after sending Sh134 million, Fairfax realized that the money was being sent elsewhere once it hit the Dell accounts provided by the fraudsters,
In reaction, it reported the matter to the authorities.
Soon the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was invited, and traced some of the money to Nairobi and resulted to arrest 281 people across the globe.
Kenyans arrested were Ndungi, Robert Mutua Muli and Amil Hassan Raage.
The three were also found to have stolen from other firms a sum amounting to Sh315.4 million, with Muli, an Immigrant from Ohio, leading with Sh212 million of stolen monies.
Raage and Ndungi stole Sh94 million and Sh7. 6 million respectively.
Mr Raage will be sentenced on October 11 and Mr Muli on October 4, with details indicating that Ndungi was living large and owned properties worth hundreds of millions.
The detectives found out that Mr Ndungi began scamming operations years back and by 2012 had bought to Cessna planes, with tail numbers 5Y-CCN and 5Y-CCO.
One of the planes was leased to the Nairobi Flight Training Limited in 2013, reports the Nation.
He also had a Range Rover Sport, Escalade and a house at Executive Suites Estate in South B, where he pretended to be selling DStv bouquets.
The property has since been seized by the United States authorities.