1001 ways to make money

Millions of Kenyans break sweat daily in incredible efforts to improve their lives. Amidst these Kenyans are a few rogue citizens who burn their midnight oil scheming how they can get rich quicker. One of their most preferred methods of getting rich has been through scams.

Unfortunately, many unsuspecting Kenyans have fallen for them in the past, and many others could be victims in the future.

To avert the latter, we take a look at some of the scams that have so far hit Kenyans and the persons who perpetrated them.

Between October 2013 and September 2014, Alfred Wangai and Mercy Nkatha engineered what is perhaps Kenya’s biggest forex trading scam via their forex trading firm known as VIP PORTAL.

Within eight months, some 13,000 unsuspecting Kenyans lost about Sh1.1 billion to the couple that was based in Limuru, Kiambu County. This amount was the total contribution that was collected from unsuspecting investors from Limuru, Nairobi, Nakuru, Nyeri, Kisii and Kisumu.

Every investor was asked to deposit a minimum amount of Sh25,000 at VIP PORTAL. The duo, which was alleged to be a couple, promised investors dividends of between 60 and 80 per cent of the amount they deposited for four consecutive months.

Once the four months expired, the investors would get their initial total deposits back. Alfred and Mercy claimed that they had an international office based at Griffith Corporate Centre, Beachmont, Kingston, St Vincent and the Grenadines.

As the ponzi scheme grew, early investors got their dividends. Then in May 2014, the bubble burst. Alfred and Mercy stopped paying investors the dividends they had promised.

They also refused to give back the deposits.

On July 7, 2014, the Chief Magistrate’s Court, Nairobi, stopped any transaction in VIP PORTAL’s four accounts namely VIP PORTAL Limited, VIP Forex Savings and Cooperative Limited, VIP Institute of Forex, and VIP Portal Limited.

By this time, the firm had a balance of Sh174 million after senior directors led by Alfred Wangai, Mercy Nkatha, Collins Thumbi and Daniel Komo withdrew most of the Sh1.08 billion that investors had deposited.

A rejoinder by the office of the Inspector General of Police to a letter dated July 30, 2014, from the Law Society of Kenya, revealed that VIP PORTAL had initially been under the investigation of the DCIO Limuru since March 2014.

The DCIO had initially written to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) seeking to establish whether Alfred and Mercy’s VIP PORTAL was registered by CBK to trade in forex or carry any banking or micro-finance business.

The CBK declared that the duo had no such registrations.

A case was filed under Police Case No. CR.No.211/218/2014 and Court File No. 1769/2014. A follow-up inquiry by the Banking Fraud Investigations Unit (BFIU) under file No. 297/2014 found out that between October 1, 2013 and May 28, 2014, VIP PORTAL’s bank account had received Sh1.08 billion from investors, and Sh7.6 million from the account had been paid out to accomplices of Alfred, Mercy, and Collins. Sh19.3 million had been paid to a company called FXCM Markets Limited of USA, and Sh528 million was claimed to have been paid out to investors. Over the past four years that investors have been trying to recover their money through court cases against Alfred and Mercy, the duo has remained underground.

Their office in Limuru has since been shut.

On January 27, 2015, Laura Oyier Ogolla walked into the Intercontinental Hotel, Nairobi, and booked a room as a guest. Over the next 19 days to February 16, 2015, Ms. Oyier stayed at the hotel.

She marked that year’s Valentine’s Day in that room. But in the days after February 14, this fairy tale turned into a nightmare. Ms. Oyier was unable to pay her accommodation bill. She had accumulated a bill of close to Sh230,000 only to claim that she did not have the money to settle it.

When asked what she did for a living, Ms. Oyier said that she was a singer and a businesswoman. She also said that she lived in a certain part of Nairobi that she could not name because of her sensitive and high profile personality.

The hotel management called in the police. Ms. Oyier was arrested and charged in court.

The prosecution informed the court that during the time that Ms. Oyier had pitched tent at the Intercontinental Hotel, she would sneak in and out to avoid suspicion or pay queries from the hotel staff. For example, she would sneak out of the hotel and return early at dawn when the receptionists would not notice her.

She was lucky enough, though, to avert a trial that was set to begin on April 15, 2015, after a local media house offered to settle her bill in March 2015.

While this could have served as a lesson for many people, it certainly wasn’t a bitter one for Ms. Oyier.

In late April 2015, she was detained again at the Villa Rosa Kempinski hotel in Nairobi after failing to pay for drinks worth Sh5,000.

Ms. Oyier was accused of attempting to pass on her bill to the Hot Rod Band which was playing at the hotel after ordering and taking the drinks herself. Following the two highly publicised sagas, Ms. Oyier alleged to have been prohibited from accessing services or visiting any of the top hotels in Nairobi. She also disappeared from social media and social events.

In December 2017, Ms. Oyier resurfaced and claimed that she had relocated to Beijing, China. She also said that she had been away from social media because Western social media sites were not allowed in China.

Brian Yongo, who says he is a debt collector, hit the headlines last year after he successfully petitioned a court to compel former presidential aspirant Cyrus Jirongo to pay him a debt of Sh20 million.

Mr. Jirongo was unable to pay the debt that had allegedly accumulated from Sh12.7 million and was arrested in August.

Two months later, in October, Yongo was also arrested for forging a Range Rover logbook and using it to get a Sh4 million loan from Mwananchi Credit Limited on November 24, 2016.

Apparently, Mr. Yongo had defaulted on paying the loan, prompting the micro lender to repossess it.

The lender then found out that the logbook was fake and did not exist in the databases of the Kenya Revenue Authority and the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA). Mr. Yongo was taken to court where he was also charged with a second count of forging yet another logbook and passing it to Ms. Anne Mukami while purporting it to be genuine.

He was released on a Sh500,000 bond. This arrest and the subsequent charging in court was only the tip of the iceberg.

Over the years, Mr. Yongo has been busted for his involvement in shady business dealings that have landed him in court numerous times.

For example, in June 2015, Mr. Yongo, who describes himself as a debt collector, was ordered to vacate a house in Kitisuru, Nairobi, over rent arrears that amounted to over Sh3 million. The rent arrears had accrued between April 2010 and May 2015. The house sat on 0.1958 hectares and belonged to Ms. Jigisha Pankat Jani and Mr. Sailesh Jani. He had also reportedly attempted to acquire the property from its rightful owners.

In 2009, Mr. Yongo sued Invesco Insurance. He demanded to be paid Sh14 million in debt collection fees and was granted orders to sell the firm’s assets in a public auction to recover the debt. He followed this up with a suit against Equity Bank in which he sought Sh10.2 million from the bank as commission for collecting debt.

CASE DISMISSED

This case was dismissed and Mr. Yongo was fined Sh500,000. Mr. Yongo had also sued Erad Supplies, which was associated with the later controversial businessman Jacob Juma over a commission worth Sh25 million for alleged debt collection services.

In March 2017, this trio was accused of defrauding aspiring homeowners close to Sh500 million. The trio had opened a real estate firm dubbed Simple Homes in 2015.

They claimed that the firm would operate on a Home Purchase Plan (HPP) model which would allow tenants to own homes using their rent money. To own a house, aspiring home owners were asked to register with Sh2,500.

After registration, they were shown pictures of houses and asked to book and save 25 per cent of the value of the house they wanted to acquire.

The buyers were told that they could move in once the houses were ready for occupation, and after completing the stipulated savings.

The icing on the cake was that no buyer would need to make full house payments, and neither was this a mortgage that would require heavy monthly deposits.

Unknown to the aspiring buyers, the photos of the houses and estates that they were shown were not in Kenya.

Allegedly, Mr. Kodhek and his associates would take photos from estates in various parts of the world and pass them as their own developments in various parts of Nairobi. For example, the houses that were marketed as being situated at Nambalee Court in Embakasi, Nairobi, were actually photos of an estate in South Africa.

Houses at Nyati Crescent along Mombasa Road were photos from a real estate development in Australia.

Once the scandal blew, the trio went into hiding. Weeks later, Mr. Kodhek and his associates were spotted at the coast where they had reportedly converted to Islam and acquired new names.

This was not the first time that Mr. Kodhek was caught in the middle of a scandal.

In 2013, Mr. Kodhek had changed his name to Yasin Bakr. He was accused of defrauding unsuspecting Kenyans in Mombasa of Sh25 million.

Apparently, he had used an interest-free investment vehicle known as Masraf Abu Bakr to carry out this scam.

This vehicle collapsed two years later in January 2015. Prior to this, Mr. Kodhek had reportedly been deported from the United Kingdom where he had been jailed under the name Eugene Leslie Khama Agwingi.