Living A Lie! Man Charged For Forging M-Pesa Messages Claiming To Have Paid Rent For 3 Years

NAIROBI,Kenya, Dec, 15 – Emmanuel Ian Osome was arraigned at the Milimani Law Courts and charged with manipulating or forging M-Pesa messages claiming to have paid his monthly rent to his landlord.

The accused is said to have used the trick for the last 37 months to dupe his landlord that he has been paying his rent.

“…. is charged that on diverse dates between the month of November 1st 2018 and November 8th 2021 at Kristy Homes in Langata Nairobi with intent to defraud edited false Mpesa transactions from his mobile phone to the caretaker mobile phone purporting it to be genuine monthly rent payments to Absa bank account of Christine Nyanchama Oandah thereby occassioning her a loss of Sh1.2 M,” said court documents.

The 37 year-old is accused of fraudulent misuse of electronic data contrary to the law.

He is facing five counts on the matter.

The landlord according to preliminary investigations filed a report at the DCIO Nairobi offices requesting investigations into the alleged fraud after realizing inconsistencies in the payment.

The caretaker is said to have received the M-Pesa messages indicating payment from the accused, little did he know however that Osome was duping them after handing out the payment receipt.

Bank accounts revealed that no money had been remitted to the rent account.

M-Pesa messages also did not correlate to any bank transactions with detectives later receiving a report from the communications authority of Kenya proving that the payments were fake.

Osome pleaded not guilty was released on a cash bail of Sh 200,000.

The accused’s lawyer however sought leniency from the court saying that his client was negotiating with the landlord in a bid to resolve the issue.

Pretrial for the case will be held early January.