There are many ways of conning Kenyans. Conmen are smart nowadays, they smell money and can identify an individual with cash. To avoid being conned,you should first know various ways people are conned,especially in Nairobi, and how to spot conmen.
Below are tricks conmen use in Nairobi to win gullible victims.
- Wash wash (Cleaning of UN dollars) Hakuna kitu kama hiyo They will do a demo of the real thing, bank the money and bait you. The 2nd job always bounces, stories and endless stories start, here they work with rogue CID friends, they lock you up for a few days and before you get out there is more money involved. Trust me I know it all well.
- Selling of Venom. Usually they will tell you the venom is gotten from ICIPE through a back door and there is a Mzungu who buys it in large quantities and is buying at a good rate. (what you don’t know is he is paid 40K for that and making the business sound legit, his job is to make an appearance and to convince you.)
- Selling of liquid fertilizer. (Here guys are told the liquid fertilizer has good yields and they take their time to Brand the 20 Liters jerrycans nicely and populate fake statistics in good printed books with randy pictures from the internet.)
- Selling of rose oil in Naivasha. (This is the 2nd high stakes job. Rose oil for those who don’t know what it is read more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_oil we don’t produce Rose oil in Kenya, Its exported and its damn expensive. Normally they package and brand nicely some clear bottles pics attached with cooking oil slightly diluted with water. They know a few terms to use and how its stored, According to the con artists, its only gotten in Naivasha and must be transported at a certain temperature so either the stories start as we needed more quantities, the buyer is sick/out of the country or they got spoilt while transporting.)
- Selling of Mombasa cars that haven’t been paid for duty. (Here they prey on people who need cars like ASAP. They tell you they have a person who can’t get you a car from someone who imported and is not able to pay the Kenyan Govt the duty hence the car is still in storage. Of course they get images of cars from internet according to your choice and send you. Once your locked in, BAM!!!!! The phone goes off the hide and seek game starts.)
- Selling of Antivirus copies in large numbers to foreign countries as Congo, Lumbumbashi e.t.c.
- Selling of Gold (This is a Naivasha game too and Sometimes Mombasa)
- They also prey on Older women who are in need of love.(No need of going into details.)
- How they will get you into this business:-
Either by taking you to see how the business is done as it happened to me or through a asking of small loan and once they don’t repay it they introduce you to the con business and milk you even more.
How to spot a Con Man.
- If the business is a deal and the commodity in question is from a back door, RUN!!!! as fast as you can.
- If they lie with ease when you are around. You are together and you overhear them lie they are sick, they are in another town e.t.c
- They will always be dealing with “cash”. If you propose a bankers cheque or a bank transfer or signing of a contract they always find a way out of it.
- Most often the person who will introduce you to a “business deal” is someone close to you, someone you trust and in most cases they know each other (the buyer, seller & middleman). When the deal goes south, s/he will always play a victim with you. He will always talk as if he did not know that would happen, you feel sorry for each other as you try to figure out what to do next. Mind you, when you two victims discuss on what to do next, he informs the others and at any one juncture, they will always be one step ahead of you. Beware of the so called close friends.
- The first time they introduce you to a “business deal”, they take you as a friend to observe and it’s in human nature to have the greed. When you see money (envelopes within envelopes that are in a bigger A5 disguised as cash) exchanging hands and the other side being paid in cash and they offer you something in return, just know that its bait and your greed will make you lose money.
