A 61-year-old woman in Ruiru, Kiambu County is under police custody after she was arrested for conning job-seekers Ksh1.4 million.
She was nabbed after four individuals reported that that they had paid the woman and her team the money after being promised jobs at the Kenya Prisons Training College.
Confirming the incident, Ruiru Sub-County Police Commander Cecilia Kemboi told the press on Saturday, February 12, that the suspect admitted that she received the money from the job-seekers.
She further noted that she believed that the syndicate operated beyond the 61-year-old woman and that several people were beneficiaries of the scheme.
Those who made the payments include Nancy Nyawira who paid Ksh300,000, Moses Gitau (Ksh350,000), Mercy Wambu (Ksh350,000) and John Kebaso (Ksh400,000).
Kenwilliams Nyakomita, a criminologist, observed that the criminals in the fake job recruitment market are very smart and do thorough research before scamming their victims.
"They have done proper research and they understand the industry very well. You ask them anything about the industry, they will tell you all about it.
"It is something that also takes a lot of time. They are very smart criminals and some of them actually do this kind of work as a full time job. They look at the newspaper. They look at the job that has been advertised. They look at the contact person and email to make it similar to the one advertised," Nyakomita stated.
This comes just days after the National Police Service (NPS) denounced a mass recruitment advert for police officers.
The advertisement had made rounds on social media purporting to want to recruit over 500 police officers to join the workforce.
The NPS on its official social media account, however, stated that the recruitment advert was fake and a scam scheme by individuals who were seeking to swindle money from innocent Kenyans.
On February 11, the NPS arrested four rogue police officers attached to Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) in Lang'ata on charges of robbery with violence after they abducted a man at NextGen Mall on February 6, 2022, at around noon and forcefully demanded money from him.
