Murang'a politician arrested for stealing Sh283,000 from man’s M-Pesa
Police in Murang'a on April 18, 2022 arrested a male politician who owns a bar in Maragua town for allegedly conspiring with his two female employees to steal Sh283,000 from a reveller.
Police in Murang'a on Monday arrested a male politician who owns a bar in Maragua town for allegedly conspiring with his two female employees to steal Sh283,000 from a reveller.
Murang'a South sub-county Police Commander Alexander Shikondi said the three and an unidentified commercial sex worker allegedly executed the theft on April 4.
He said the three were picked up by Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officers from the politician's bar in Thayu estate.
Mr Shikondi said the politician, who is contesting a county assembly seat as an independent candidate, was accused of stealing the money by 46-year-old Paul Kamau Mwaura through OB Number 35 of April 11, 2022 at Maragua Police Station.
Police say the four suspects conspired to steal the money from Mr Mwaura's mobile wallet and the politician used his bar's till number and personal mobile phones to execute the fraud.
Money laundering
The politician also faces a charge of money laundering after he certified the fraud to his till number as part of his business transaction, hence sanitising the source of the cash.
According to a police statement that Nation.Africa has seen, Mr Mwaura sold part of his family land and went to the bar, located near the Maragua Police Station, to "thank himself for executing a sale".
It was not long before the politician and barmaids sensed that their customer had a lot of money and the conspiracy to steal from him was hatched.
"There were four transactions that were effected from the victim's phone – Sh93,000 and Sh90,000 twice before a Sh10,000 transfer left him with an overdraft of Sh400," Mr Shikondi said.
M-Pesa statements
He said that detectives had secured all the suspects' phones, books of account and M-Pesa statements.
"We are compiling evidence and we are getting somewhere. One of the suspects has been very helpful, since she has owned up. We are now transforming the owning [into] hard evidence. It does not matter from whom you steal ... even drunkards are entitled to the security of both their lives and properties," he said.
In his statement to the police, Mr Mwaura said he did not know how they got to know his PINs to effect the fraud "but I suspect the bar has CCTV cameras and they zoomed me in as I transacted, they laced my alcohol with sedatives and I passed out."
He says he was shocked the following day when he woke up from the bar's lodgings and attempted to pay for a morning drink to clear the clutter in his head, only to receive feedback that he had insufficient funds to pay for the Sh100 order.
"It slowly dawned on me that I had been visited by the devil in a very big way and recorded a police complaint statement after six days of personal investigations," he said.
