Detectives have shared videos and pictures of the slain businessman killed in Mirema allegedly robbing people at Automated Teller Machine (ATM) booths.
In an attempt to piece together the death of Samuel Mugoh Muvota, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) released the CCTV footage and linked the father of seven to various crimes across the city.
Detectives stated Muvota hired beautiful, expensive-looking women and deployed them as drinks spiking agents to various high-end entertainment joints in the city and its environs.
Investigators claimed that Muvota had recruited over 50 beautiful women into his syndicate, accusing him of breaking marriages, leaving many men hospitalised and others dead from an overdose of stupefying drugs.
In the statement, DCI noted in recent days, Muvota targeted patrons looking for entertainment in high-end establishments including top public servants, businessmen, politicians and men of the cloth. The detectives noted that in his craft, the slain businessman seemed to have made more enemies.
Muvota was also surprisingly married to seven women who did not know each other and who did not know what he did for a living.
DCI stated that Muvota was arrested over 30 times in the past 11 years on fraud-related charges and had been in and out of almost all courts in Nairobi and the neighbouring Kiambu county.
Detectives further stated the slain man was widely known by cyber security specialists in the banking sector for the many times he fraudulently accessed clients’ accounts through various ATM machines, sweeping the accounts clean.
"In 2018, at an ATM in Kayole, he transferred Ksh700,000 in a single transaction from an account of a woman he was assisting through Pesalink to one of his fraudulent accounts, leaving a balance of only Ksh700," the DCI stated.
"The woman had walked to the ATM booth to check whether a loan she had applied for at the bank had been deposited in her account when she met Muvota. When she learnt of what had happened, she collapsed and died."
Detectives believe he worked with crooked banking officials who assisted him to clean up accounts in a matter of minutes. He preferred certain ATM booths.
DCI also stated that Muvota had connections at several police stations and whenever detectives launched a manhunt for him, he would be tipped off in time.
"Muvota began his trade in 2011 by hanging around city ATMs and offering to assist customers who had difficulties withdrawing money from their accounts. Working with crooked banking officials who would jam the teller machines once a client inserted his ATM card, Muvota would approach the client offering to assist," the sleuths stated.
"He would insert the client’s card then pretend to be facing away and ask the client to key in his password and first confirm the balance before withdrawing the amount they wished. However, since the machines eject the ATM card first, he would get hold of the card as the unsuspecting client waited for the cash.
"At this point, Muvota would swap the card with another one and hand the happy client a fake card. Woe unto the account holder if the account had a fat balance since Muvota would then visit different ATM booths withdrawing cash until the accounts were swept clean," the DCI added.
