Ten individuals suspected of involvement in a gold scam, including a police officer, were apprehended on Friday as a result of an operation conducted by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI).
This operation, which commenced last Thursday, successfully prevented a Tunisian national from spending Ksh.1 billion on a tonne of counterfeit gold.
DCI Director, Amin Mohammed, arrived at the Garden Estate area of Nairobi on Friday morning to oversee the operation. Detectives raided a location that had been transformed into an upscale office, where they seized counterfeit gold and fake US dollar bills employed by the scammers to deceive unsuspecting businesspersons.
The operation resulted in the arrest of ten individuals, among them a police officer assigned to the DCI offices in Kitui, who is suspected of being involved in protecting the scammers operating within the country.
Also under investigation is a senator and two Mps from Nairobi are suspected of being part of the scam
“The operation originated in Tunisia when the scammers claimed they had the capacity to sell gold to the victim… When he became suspicious and reported the matter to us,” stated DCI Amin.
The victim arrived in the country at around 3 a.m. the previous Friday. After waiting for nearly an hour without anyone to pick him up, a taxi driver convinced him that he would be safely transported to his intended destination.
He was taken to the Ngara area of Nairobi, where he remained incommunicado until Thursday of the following week when he was summoned to the Garden Estate office.
The scammers demanded a payment of Ksh.400 million before allowing the victim to see the gold. After a sample was smelted and verified, he was supposed to pay the remaining Ksh.600 million. However, he did not attend the meeting alone.
Detectives, accompanied by the DCI’s tactical team, raided the office and arrested ten individuals. Two individuals, one of whom was suspected to be armed, managed to escape by tearing through a shade net fence that had been installed to raise the height of the perimeter wall and provide privacy.
“This is a major cartel that resorts to name-dropping to intimidate law enforcement officers. They also operate in a highly sophisticated manner,” DCI Amin added.
DCI Director is now investigating a sitting Senator, two Members of Parliament, and senior officers in the National Police Service (NPS) who made frantic phone calls in an attempt to secure the release of the suspects.
The scammers were also found in possession of counterfeit currency stored in metal boxes within one of the rooms on the premises.
“Numerous victims have incurred substantial financial losses, and these scammers were nearly turning our country, particularly the Kilimani area, into the epicenter of their operations. But we are closing in on them,” Amin emphasized.
The scammers had established fully equipped offices, using them as addresses for multimillion-dollar deals. Some posed as various government officials.
“Some pretended to be police officers, others impersonated officials from the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), and some even posed as customs officers, complete with counterfeit documents, which we have since discovered,” Amin pointed out.
The confiscated items, including a pistol, mobile phones, and numerous metal boxes used to store counterfeit money and gold, were transported to the DCI headquarters.
The suspects are expected to be arraigned in court on Monday.
