How lost ID card landed Kisumu man in violent robbery case

A Kisumu-based small-scale farmer is in trouble after criminals registered a SIM card using his lost national identity card and used it in criminal activities.

He faces life in prison if convicted.

Mr Tobias Onyango Aiko from Kawese village in Kisumu East Sub-County was charged at the Makadara Law Courts in Nairobi with stealing a mobile phone worth Sh19,000 and stealing Sh452,000 which was transferred from the M-Pesa and bank account of a victim of robbery with violence.

Mr Aiko is charged with stealing the phone and the cash from Elizabeth Makotsi in Eastleigh, Nairobi, on May 4 this year.

Ms Makotsi was headed to a shopping mall in the business area when she was accosted by three women and two men who robbed her of her handbag containing the phone and sped off on two standby motorcycles.

The thugs were armed with crude weapons.

Ms Makotsi reported the incident at the Eastleigh police station and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) took up investigations.

Hours later, she discovered that a total of Sh452,000 had been transferred from her M-Pesa and bank accounts to several phone numbers.

Information with the DCI

She requested Safaricom and the bank to stop further transfers and shared the same information with the DCI.

During investigations, the DCI established that a SIM card registered using Mr Aiko’s ID card had received some of the money transferred from Ms Makotsi’s accounts, and they traced him to Kisumu.

Officers from DCI Starehe office requested his area chief to summon him to her office where they arrested him and brought him to Nairobi.

He was held at the Ruaraka police station from July 24 as DCI officers carried out investigations before he was charged in court.  

Mr Aiko denied the charges before Principal Magistrate Irene Mwangi and told the court that his first and last time in Nairobi was in 1988 when he visited his brother who worked in the city. He added that he even does not even know where Eastleigh is.

Mr Aiko said he lost his national ID in 2017 and replaced it the following year and had no connection with the SIM cards that received the cash sent from Ms Makotsi’s accounts.

The trouble with Mr Aiko arises from the fact that he did not report the loss of his ID card to the police before it was used to register the SIM cards that were later used for criminal activities. 

He escaped charges of robbery with violence because there was no evidence to place him at the scene of crime where Ms Makotsi was robbed. 

The suspect was released on a bond of Sh100,000 and a surety of a similar amount and an alternative cash bail of Sh50,000.

The case will come up for mention on August 31 and the hearing is set to begin on October 11.