Police Spokesperson Bruno Shioso has spoken just hours after a Citizen TV exposé lifted a lid on a mobile phone scam operating within the dreaded Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.
Christened Kamiti Call Center, the exposé, which aired on Friday, April 17, revealed that the cartel, which operated in cahoots with prison officials as well as outside authorities, conned unsuspecting Kenyans millions of shillings by offering fake jobs or ingenuous investment ideas.
Speaking exclusively to Kenyans.co.ke on Monday, April 18, Shioso explained that the racket has been operating for a long and that the police had been trying to dismantle it for years.
He further noted that police recruitments are the main target with investigations showing that most cons originate from the Kamiti Call Center.
"It is not the first time. The problem at Kamiti has been there for the longest time and we have always been trying to dismantle that network with the help of the prison authorities. We shall also look into it and we have received a lot of scams during the recruitment of police recently.
"We are already doing investigations against the police recruitment where most of the calls were coming from Kamiti. The investigations started after recruitment. We traced the signals and showed that they were coming from Kamiti," stated Shioso.
He further added that for individuals found guilty, the law would take its course and that the individuals would be prosecuted in court.
"We can't say what would happen to them. What we know is that if they are involved and there is evidence, we take them to court, and then the due process happens now.
"After investigations, the action is taken as per the law. The first thing is they go to court, the prison can do internal actions but all this is based on the evidence collected," he explained.
So far, no suspects have been arrested from the Kamiti ring but some, operating outside of the maximum-security prisons, have been apprehended as investigations into the issue continue.
The investigative piece by Citizen TV's Lulu Hassan showed that the racket had scammed millions of shillings from unsuspecting Kenyans using a special type of mobile phone.
The phone has a magic sound that can transform the speaker's voice to imitate that of a man, woman or child and some of the convicts are good at faking accents.
The scammers often dupe their victims that they should send money to secure a job, lured in by a potential love interest, or lied to that they have won a lottery and must send some cash to facilitate the transactions.
One of the cartel members, whose identity was concealed, confirmed that the scammers often draft a message that is then sent to thousands of Kenyans with the hope that a few will fall for the trick. The numbers are often chosen at random.
In the most recent scam, a Kamiti Maximum Prison convict defrauded a desperate job seeker Ksh800,000. Patrick Shikure confessed that he defrauded the woman Ksh800,000 while serving a life sentence inside the highly guarded facility with the promise of connecting her to a lucrative job at State House.
