Kenya’s telecoms market leader Safaricom has fallen victim to a massive SIM card fraud scheme that investigators believe is worth over Ksh500 million ($4 million).
This week, the Kenyan Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) revealed that it had arrested eight scammers who were using fraudulently generated SIM card numbers to apply for loans from Safaricom’s Fuliza service.
According to the DCI, investigations began in August 2022 after its Banking Fraud Investigations Unit (BFIU) received a report from Fuliza managers of an unusual spike in outstanding mobile money loans. Further inquiry revealed that one suspect had gained access to Kenya’s National Registration Database where he registered hundreds of new SIM cards he later sold to accomplices who, in turn, used them to create fake identities.
“Over 123,000 new mobile phone numbers opted into mobile loans and took up loans in January 2022. Thereafter, the SIM cards were either fraudulently vacated or switched off and efforts to reach the customers turned futile. The suspects would initially borrow money and repay thereby improving their credit scores until the SIM cards achieved their limits when they would borrow for the last time before disposing of the SIM card,” the DCI stated.
Eight suspects were arrested in the Kiamunyi and Kitale regions of Kenya where the DFI recovered 14 mobicom phones used in registering M-Pesa user SIM cards, six laptops, over 40 mobile phones, seven routers, and 1,000 Safaricom subscriber registration forms.
The suspects, presently in DCI custody, are awaiting arraignment in court.
Ghana
Currently in Ghana, some SIM cards are still not registered with the only approved national ID, the Ghana Card and yet those SIM cards are still active. Some fraudsters continue to use some of these SIM cards to target innocent victims and those fraudsters are not traceable because they are not captured on the national ID database nor on the SIM register.
Secondly, in the Kenyan incident it is obvious that their national ID database was hacked by fraudsters who managed to register fake SIM cards on that database.
Ghanaian authorities need first of all to quickly weed out the SIM cards which are not captured on the national database and yet remain active and are being used by fraudsters to target innocent Ghanaians.
Secondly, there is an urgent need to guard the national ID database and the SIM register against hackers who may want to register fake ID cards and fake SIM cards to enable them continue with their mobile money fraud and other forms of digital fraud.
