Mobile money theft is the latest mode of crime in the lakeside town of Nakuru.
This has been worsened by the rising levels of unemployment in the town, pushing the youth into crime.
In Nakuru, there has been a sudden mushrooming of groups of young people using cunning ways to rob Kenyans across the nation of their money.
I was recently in a similar spot when a person who identified himself as Bernard Onyango called me, claiming that my sim card had been locked from the service provider’s side.
To unlock it, he directed, I had to follow several steps.
He began by advising me to get another phone and send him the new number with which he was to dictate the directives as I dialed them on my number.
The first step was to access my mobile banking menu, after which I was told to go to the ‘send money’ menu, but warned to not insert any number.
Similarly, I was warned to move away from people, in case they mastered my PIN number, all this time telling me to not worry about the airtime he was using as the company uses free credit.
This followed an initial request to reveal the amount of money I had in there, and when I got to the point of inserting the recipient’s number, I was told that I would not put in the number but instead a confirmation code.
Here, believing that I was a naive Kenyan after lying to him that I was in some remote side of Kennya, he read out his number which I was to feed into the space, only that he read it in a unique style, apparently to fool me into sending it to him.
Instead of beginning with 07, he began with +25, then 47 and went ahead to read the others, two by two, and like a good boy, I followed.
Next was the amount, where he told me to key in 0000, which as I came to realize later, would send all my money to the number above and reduce my account to zero.
What followed was for me to simultaneously press OK thrice, apparently to hastily send the money and confirm the transaction without realizing that I had surrendered my money to the scammer.
But I am also a clever Nax-Vegan and had no money on that line and when he did not see any confirmation on his line, he retorted at me, hitting out and hurling insults.
Therefore, be on the lookout as you might not be as lucky and informed as I was.
#hivisasaoriginal #MyLifestyle