Mobile Money Conmen

It is around 5.00 pm and you are waiting to catch a bus home or you are walking out of a supermarket and a smartly dressed person approaches you.

With a phone in the hand and says he/she is stranded and cannot find an open Moblie Money point anywhere nearby and wants some money urgently. He/she requests that you give him/her maybe Ush 20,000/= or more and is willing to send you the money on your Moblie Money account. You sympathetically accept but insist that he/she sends the money to your account first. He /she sends you the money plus maybe Ush 5000/= as a token of appreciation for going out of your way to assist.

Con characters from the Movie series Hustle

The transaction is done and you check your phone balance and see the money has actually been sent. You give out the money and the ‘gentleman/lady’ thanks you and walks away or even drives away as he/she may be driving!

Immediately the person disappears, you receive a message on your phone! You scroll to check the message and you find it has come from M-pesa and says the M-pesa transaction done just a few minutes ago has been cancelled/reversed!!. Your balance is as was before the latest transaction! And you have already given out the Ush 20,000/=. You try desperately to get the person but it is too late. He/she is gone. The person craftily cancelled the transaction by calling the Moblie Money hot-line and claiming that he/she erroneously sent some money to a wrong number! And the transaction is legally cancelled. 

You have been conned!!

You are left with no proof that someone has taken your money!!.