In the last few days, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) has been on the lookout for a group operating out of houses in the Milimani neighborhood.
“During the raid, Francis Maina Wambui Alias Nick, 26, and Zellic Alusa, 25, both Kenyatta University students, were arrested in the company of two young girls inside an apartment in Nakuru’s upmarket Milimani suburb,” the DCI stated.
According to the DCI, in a complex crime that is gaining traction in Kenya, students create phony email accounts and use them to hijack credit cards of innocent people, particularly those in other nations, and use them to purchase bitcoins, which are then converted to Kenyan cash.
The accused then utilize the revenues of their unlawful activities to live lavishly and purchase houses, according to the agency.
“Among the documents recovered in the house was a land sale agreement entered on May, 25, for a property valued at Sh 850,000 in Juja,” said the DCI.
Five laptops, four cellphones, two wifi devices, three hard drives, and a variety of SIM cards were among the goods recovered during the operation.
President Uhuru Kenyatta, when commissioning the DCI National Forensic Laboratory on Monday, asked for the strengthening of the Cyber and Digital Forensic Lab to deal with modern crimes including technological misuse.
Bitcoin is a digital money that runs independently of any central authority or government monitoring.
According to the DCI, this has allowed tech-savvy criminals to break into people’s bank accounts, buy bitcoins, and leave little or no trace.