A Kenyan has narrated how she almost lost money to MPESA criminals.She warns anyone using MPESA to be vigilant.Below is what happened to her
Warning to MPESA users, few minutes ago, I received an unexpected money (Ksh. 5050/=) clearly indicating its from MPESA. The sender is one FATMA ABDALLA. Note this is not from a mobile line but from MPESA and text registered in my MPESA messages log.
After a short while, a lady calls me to say the money was wrongly sent to me and it was meant for school fees and she desperately needs it soonest. I encouraged her to call Safaricom and get a refund with no costs but she insisted its better I resend since its urgent and the child is at home. All along, a colleague of mine is listening to the conversation and immediately warned me not to send coz these are fraudsters.
However, I kept on insisting to him that the message is from MPESA and therefore there is no way that the message is a fake one. Together we agreed to resend the money since after all my account had only Ksh.279/=. In this case, to send Ksh. 4980/=, so that I can retain my balance and not to bare any costs of transaction.
To my shock, MPESA replied indicating that I do not have enough money in my account and that my balance is only Ksh. 279/=. Two possibilities,
1) MPESA system has been hacked by frauds of which Safaricom should have already detected or
2) which to me is more likely, there is a cartel of frauds within Safaricom just sending out “empty” MPESA texts and this time not coming through a phone number but as an MPESA message disguised as authentic.
WARNING!!! If you receive
Such a text, just tell the person to follow the money with Safaricom. This is what I finally told the so called FATMA though she did not want to follow that route. I barely survived!!!!
