Two Kencream Sacco members were charged on Monday with hacking into its computer system and stealing Sh1,747,685 through a mobile banking platform.
Barrack Obama, John Odhiambo and others not before court had joined the Sacco shortly before the alleged theft. They were arraigned in Makadara, where they denied any wrongdoing before chief magistrate Heston Nyaga. They were granted Sh500,000 surety bond. The case will be heard from May 7.
Kencream Sacco membership is open to employees of New KCC and businesspeople. The eight registered as businessmen. A police report presented to the court says the two and six others had registered as members of the Sacco with fake mobile and identification numbers. Upon being listed, they requested to be allowed to specifically use mobile banking services, it says. They insisted they be given the mobile banking PIN numbers for the phone numbers they had provided.
The accused allegedly committed the offence between August 1 and 3 last year.
“The forensic audit reveals that the hacking of the Sacco to credit the eight accounts with funds should have started shortly on July 31, 2019, and by August 2, 2019, the said accounts had already been credited with funds, which amounted to about Sh3.6 million,” the report reads.
It is alleged that at around 8pm on August 2, the suspects started withdrawing the funds using a mobile banking system. That continued up to around 12am of August 3, when the Sacco staff noted abnormal withdrawals.
The staff then stopped the withdrawal by debiting the remaining money so the suspects could no longer access it. They then informed Safaricom to reverse the transaction made and they were able to recover Sh125,633.
Kencream CEO Boniface Kihara made an official report that the Sacco’s computer system in the Industrial Area had been hacked and data manipulated, hence leading to loss of money.
