A suspect has been arrested after police uncovered a well-coordinated fake milk procurement scheme worth over Ksh1.8 million in Mombasa.
The arrest followed an investigation sparked by a milk distributor who flagged a series of suspicious bulk orders by a new client posing as an ambitious distributor.
In a statement, the National Police Service revealed the suspect received deliveries of milk from a local depot between July 5 and July 18, 2025, with the total value amounting to Ksh1,855,400.
When it came to payments, however, it was discovered that they were made using edited mobile money text messages which were masqueraded to look like they were from a legitimate financial service provider.
The messages were detected by the supply company's sales officer, who noticed inconsistencies in the payment records.
Notably, while the client shared SMS confirmations for each transaction, the first red flag was the fact that they were traced to a different mobile network and did not reflect in the distributor's official records. The discrepancy prompted the company to alert authorities.
The company arranged a final delivery of 150 cartons of milk on July 19 in a trap to nab the suspects in Mtopanga, Kadzandani. Officers, who were monitoring the delivery, arrested a suspect at a drop off point upon completion of the transaction.
Following the arrest, investigators were led to two single-room houses in the area, where 1555 cartons of milk with an estimated market value of Ksh960,232 were recovered.
Authorities strongly believe the batch is part of a larger batch which was acquired fraudulently in previous transactions.
The latest operation came just days after police zeroed in on a gold-scam mastermind, who was nabbed on July 14 after a year on the run.
According to a police report, the suspect was linked to fraudulent gold purchase contracts involving over 1,080 kilograms of the precious metal.
The contracts were presented to foreign nationals with promises of secure delivery, guaranteed collateral, and legal support to facilitate the transactions.
