As Byron Adera puts it, his civilian version of shameless Mujahideen are the unashamed cons and fraudsters who patrol the social and online spaces, and leverage on some low level Psychology that either exerts negative pressure or appeals to “hope” on unsuspecting individuals to con or defraud them.

In this day and age, it’s as easy as guessing up a phone number, then bouncing it off some Apps like Trucaller to come up with a neat profile on which to ride on. Some cons apply more effort: they identify suitable targets either by using human intelligence, or by information gained from close associates to the target “victim” and/or open source information about them. In high tech cases, the cons exploit social and professional platforms to identify candidates that they use as ladders to gain legitimacy with a second layer, THE TARGETS. In this case, they engage the first layer, the chosen candidate that they thoroughly profiled, and drop a sellable cover story that the candidate buys as legitimate. They then ask for something the candidate here doesn’t offer (outside the province of their expertise) and ask to be referred to persons who are able to perform the task or offer the service.

The candidate, being “connected” will then refer people well known to them to the con/fraudsters. Since this now comes with a healthy dosage of familiarity, the ultimate target victim falls headlong to the con/fraudster capitalizing on a false-sense of TRUST by assuming due diligence is a given, as it was done by his professional associate/friend/sibling.

Common denominator is, these cons/fraudsters use fitting narratives (cover story) given what they know about their target victim(s), or what they know will appeal as a do-or-die matter a victim would fall for. The results are catastrophic: people end up LOOSING MONEY, either accessible via mobile money platforms and/or from targets’ bank accounts linked to mobile money access avenues.

Here’s to you:

In the Special Forces, we say “never be in a hurry to get yourself killed.” Ideally, there’s always time to think through things critically, set them up three times, consider them twice, act (decisively) ONCE.

Elevate your situational awareness and always ask yourself the good-old WHAT IFS: Safaricom isn’t going to call and ask for your Identity credentials to “fix” a problem on your line. Especially, NOT with a number that comes through as SPAMMED, or as “THUG X” on Trucaller.

Take decisive post-incident action.

It’s not enough for a gardener to LOVE FLOWERS; they MUST ALSO HATE WEEDS.

We are accepting to have these rotten potatoes amongst us because we don’t “discard” them. They offend us but we have become tolerant of them. WRONG MOVE: report these folks to the relevant authorities so they are DEALT WITH.
Tag DCI on TWITTER, their FICHUA number #0800 722 203, and engage the relevant MOBILE SERVICE providers CUSTOMER CARE/ANTI-FRAUD teams to WEED OUT these cons/fraudsters.