A suspect who broke away from Mulot syndicate has been caught with forged documents bearing the credentials of an officer attached to the Nairobi Central Police Station.
Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), in a statement on Thursday, arrested the notorious sim swap fraudster in Thika.
The suspect had presented himself to replace simcards at a mobile money shop when the detectives, who were tipped off by the shop's attendants, pounced on him.
He was armed with a forged identification (ID) waiting card and a police abstract form purportedly issued by Central Police Station-Nairobi.
"Upon interrogation, (the suspect) led detectives to a house in Zimmerman where a mobile phone used for sim registration, assorted sim replacement cards, forged police abstract forms and waiting cards bearing different names, a (mobile money) till number application booklet, several ID cards among other items were recovered," read the statement in part.
The arrest came just a few weeks after another suspect was arrested on Tuesday last week and arraigned in court over similar crimes.
The suspect had presented herself for simcard replacement at a mobile money shop in Komarock area of Nairobi County.
According to the police, the suspect was using forged documents with the sole intention of stealing from her victims mobile money wallets.
"Paper writings bearing confidential customer information were recovered from her house in Komarock-Nairobi," added the police statement.
"(The two) are believed to be a detachment of the infamous Mulot team who target individuals with large mobile money balances and once they take over the victims' phone numbers, they are able drain off their accounts."
DCI is investigating the syndicate and launched a manhunt for several accomplices whose names have been lodged to the authority.
Towards the end of 2022, the DCI unearthed the Mulot syndicate for using swim swap technology to wipe clean unsuspecting Kenyans' accounts. A lawmaker is one of the victims.
The syndicate infiltrated a bank account belonging to a legislator from Rift Valley and made away with Ksh941,000.
The main suspect on the police wanted list orchestrated the online heist by hijacking the victim's phone number before gaining access to his details.
"The fraudsters who have also perfected the act of impersonating senior government officials recently obtained an unspecified amount of money from unsuspecting members of the public, after posing as a senior state official who would influence employment and business opportunities at a fee," DCI's statement read in part.
"The suspects who have registered multiple SIM cards using details from fraudulently acquired identification documents, deposit the siphoned money to different Mpesa accounts, in a bid to make it difficult for detectives to track them down," DCI added.
