Nairobi. In what sounds more like a blockbuster plot than real life, three men—Eric Munene Kaburu, Dennis Jerah Ombogo, and Morris Muriithi Mugambi—are now cooling their heels in custody after allegedly staging a high-tech, low-key digital heist that saw Ksh 10 million vanish from the Safaricom Sacco account at Cooperative Bank.
The suspects reportedly waved their cyber wands and executed unauthorised cash transfers, sprinkling the stolen millions into a network of bank and M-Pesa accounts like they were planting money trees. The whole scheme was so slick, even the bank’s security systems had to blink twice before sounding the alarm.
Cooperative Bank finally raised a red flag when its systems detected financial gymnastics that would make a circus jealous. Safaricom Sacco’s internal investigation quickly confirmed the nightmare: someone had breached the vault digitally.
In a classic crime-thriller twist, the suspects were busted on May 27. Kaburu was nabbed shopping, perhaps spending some of the allegedly “digitally teleported” loot at a Nairobi mall. Meanwhile, his partners in crime were dramatically cornered at a lodging near the Namanga border. Border getaway? Or just a really bad choice of vacation timing?
With the case heating up, the Director of Public Prosecutions asked the court for a warrant to poke into the suspects’ phones and storm their homes, not for tea, but to search for the digital command centres possibly used in the operation. Word has it, laptops and routers may have played bigger roles in this script than the actual suspects.
In the meantime, affected bank and M-Pesa accounts have been frozen faster than a Nairobi boda rider’s smile during a police stop. Some Sacco services have also been paused as a precaution because once bitten by hackers, twice shy.
This developing cyber saga is turning out to be a thrilling tech crime telenovela minus the love triangle.
