Editor's Review

  • The officer was found with over 10,000 sim cards and mobile phones suspected to be aiding fraud.
  • The officer will be arraigned in court and charged accordingly.

Officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) have arrested a prisons constable in Bondo, Siaya County in connection with illegal sim card registration and swaps.

The DCI in a statement on Thursday morning said the prison warder based at the Prison Headquarters was arrested for irregular sim swap and sim registration.

Prison constable Charles Opollo Ndaga was arrested within Sinapanga Estate in Bondo Township.

"Over Ten Thousand Safaricom Sim Cards registered under different names, Two Equitel Sim Cards and three ID Cards, a laptop, several mobile phones, a cheque book among other items were recovered in his house. The suspect will be charged accordingly," the DCI stated in a statement.

Mobile mone fraudsters often contact your Safaricom and try to convince the call centre employees that they are, in fact, you, using your personal data.

They are then allowed to swap sim cards but Safaricom has in the recent past introduced a new feature tackling the vice.

In the new feature, if anyone tries to register a new SIM card with your ID number, you will receive an SMS from Safaricom using the ID 707.

You will then choose Yes to authorise the registration or NO to cancel it, making it impossible for the fraudsters to take over your Mpesa and its related accounts through illegal swaps.