Police in Kampala has arrested over 52 men and two ladies suspected to be lucky draw fraudsters.
The arrest was as a result of various telecom companies reporting to police about the in number of complaints received from their numerous subscribers that a group of fraudsters have been sending text messages that they have won cash prices or misplaced mobile money transactions.
Police investigated the matter, identified the suspects and tracked their movements. The arrested syndicate can be best described as being similar to a spider’s webs through their call connections.
MODE OF OPERATION
The suspected fraudsters send congratulatory messages to peoples’ phones informing them of an amount of money they have won and the recipient of the text message is immediately requested to call a certain phone number to redeem his or her prize, stating that the text message is often accompanied with a fake pin number, which are all attempts to obtain the recipient’s cooperation.
The moment you call, the receiver purporting to be working with a telecommunication network will ask you to confirm the pin number and scratch a credit card for them to begin the processing of your prize.
You are also promised a refund of the credit when the processing is over. However, after defrauding they switch off the phones and there is no prize to pick up.
Other times the fraudsters send a fake mobile money message and call back requesting it back arguing it was a mistaken deposit and the unsuspecting users end up loosing huge sums of money.
The tracking of several of these numbers located the owners in areas of Salama Road and Busabala where most of these anonymous conning calls originate.
The officers cordoned off all particular areas where the tracking device had led them to and not only arrested the suspects but also recovered forged documents, devices and tools as well as phones and simcards suspected to be used in the fraud.
The suspects upon arrest confessed to the acts and revealed to the investigating officers that they had been forced into these acts due to the harsh economic conditions.
However much these suspects have been using phones with sophiscated security features investigators were able to penetrate and arrest the syndicate.
Upon conducting of a search, police were able to recover a number of phones suspected to be used in scamming innocent citizens. Its alleged these suspects usually demand for a fee ranging between 20,000/= and 50,000/= in form of airtime or mobile money.
Kampala Metropolitan Spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire said that the suspects are
are to be arraigned before courts of law on charges of obtaining money by false pretenses.
Members of the general public are cautioned to be mindful of such activities for a lot of people have been swindled under this type of falsehood.
The public should take note that service providers don’t charge any money or its equivalent before prizes are redeemed and any request for money, recharge cards or airtime before a prize is redeemed is fraudulent.
Promotions from service providers are authenticated and names of winners published on their official websites.
