Police arrest Twitter cheat who conned love-struck women

A Twitter swindler who allegedly conned a Nairobi love-struck woman of Sh3.5 million has been arrested and remanded.

It has emerged that Mr Emmanuel Gift Masinde, who was exposed mid-last year after he allegedly conned seven women off their hard-earned cash, was nabbed on December 22, 2022, and is currently being held at the Industrial Area Prison.

In November 2022, the 27-year-old was exposed by a lawyer known as Francis Wanjiku Njoroge, saying that the suspect was a wanted man and anybody who would give information about his whereabouts will be given a reward of Sh100,000.

Speaking exclusively to this reporter, the lawyer said the suspect had a warrant of arrest on his head but was escaping police dragnets.

“He was nabbed by the police and taken to Industrial Area Prison. The matter was heard in court on January 2, 2023 and it will come up again in the next few weeks. We shall seek to have him jailed for 30 more days as the matter goes on,” said the lawyer.

The Nation has established that the suspect was nabbed by sleuths attached to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) while he was having a drink at a popular club in Westlands before he was taken to the Industrial Area.

Court documents seen by the Nation reveal that the suspect allegedly conned one Ms CME of her Sh1.1 million.

According to the lawyer, Mr Masinde targeted women on social media. Before they could know it, they had already sent him money after he gave them false explanations.

In the court documents on the matter in which he conned Ms CME, the suspect received the cash but never honored a court order to return the same.

Mr. Masinde appears to target well-off career women desperate to settle down and those who use high-end mobile phones and have a social media presence.

So manipulative is he that even women living abroad were duped into cleaning out their bank accounts for him one or two months after meeting their “prince charming”.

The cleverly executed swindling scheme involved faking documents, and bank cheques, telling blatant lies and associating with the law firm of a prominent politician, the office of a high-ranking government official, and a former National Land Commission (NLC) senior official whom he claims is his mother.

The second woman caught up in Masinde’s web is a big company director within Nairobi’s city center.

Mr Masinde slid into her Twitter inbox with the pretense of tapping her brains over a tax matter.

The woman says she then proceeded to a credit facility where she knows people, took out a loan of Sh936,000 and wired it to Mr Masinde.

This story was first published on Nairobi News