Over 100 community-based organisations across the country claim to have lost millions of shillings due to alleged fake donor funding.
The victims, who include church members and small-scale traders, said that they donated the funds, through mobile transactions, to a woman who had promised to help them access foreign aid after making the donations.
The foreign aid would, in turn, help the organisations buy land, dig boreholes, and provide education for the needy in the society, according to members of the organisations.
The woman allegedly persuaded the organisations to pay the registration and facilitation fee to join and gain benefits.
"I went and got millions of money from the bank, and now I have more than Ksh7 million that I have not paid to the bank, and all that I have given to the woman. Some people here have sold their properties to give the money," one victim said.
"We want the government to help us retrieve the money because when we were donating, we were told that registered people would get some money, boreholes, and many other things," another victim said.
However, on the other hand, the said woman, who spoke to NTV, said that the leaders of the community-based organisations are the ones who are misleading their members.
A report earlier this year by TransUnion Africa revealed that Kenya tops the list for the most digital fraud incidents on the continent between August and December 2024.
According to the report, 82 per cent of Kenyans claimed that they had been targeted by fraudsters through email, online, by phone call, or by text message during this period.
Despite the majority of individuals claiming that they did not fall for the trap, 11 per cent of them admitted that they fell victim to the fraudsters and ended up losing money, especially through third-party seller scams on legitimate online retail websites.
According to TransUnion, a typical Kenyan fraud victim loses about Ksh117,000 per incident.
"Third-party seller scams top the list, with 34 per cent reporting losses—the highest across all countries surveyed. Significant losses were also reported to unemployment fraud (26 per cent), account takeovers (25 per cent), and social engineering scams (22 per cent)," the report stated.
