Kuna fraud inaendelea currently. A friend of mine lost a lot of money to it. Ni gang flani wako na insiders in Safaricom. Huyu jamaa alitumiwa 80K hlfu akapigiwa simu asking that he reverses. The woman at the end of the line says she is in Hospital and can't wait for Safaricom's reversal process. Jamaa akarudisha pesa. A few minutes later his line was suspended and a reversal of the initial transaction initiated. They called Safcom and read his ID which they got from insiders, and claimed the line was stolen.
Since his money was like 4K after he had sent back the 80k, they looked at his Mpesa statement and saw that he had sent 90k to someone else a few days back. They got that number and suspended it and initiated a reversal back to the guy's number, then reversed their 80k juu sasa balance imekamilika.
That's it in a nutshell, or at least vile nimeelewa. The issue is not the guy's stupidity. The issue is basically safaricom allows anyone to suspend anyone's line with just ID and DOB. And they allow a reversal to be done on a suspended number. And for up to 30 days.
Kwa hvyo don't allow anyone to send you a huge amount via send money. You sending it is not an issue, but if you receive it there are many ways to reverse it apparently. Tumia bank ama agent ama Paybill. And spread the information.
Edit:
After a lot of back and forth with Safaricom, the victims of the subsequent suspensions and reversals (a number of them so far) were told that the only way they could have prevented this was to click *100*100# so as not to allow anyone to suspend your line remotely. While it's mindblowing that this is not activated for all customers by default, it's a bit comforting to know their is a way to prevent this. Beware
Edit 2:
Some ppl say I was not clear enough. This is how it goes: A scammer gets one victim. Then they convince them to send the money back. If they fall for that, they do a reversal if the victim's balance is enough. Up to now it's a classic old scam. But when they see the balance is not enough, they get the victim's statement from insiders in Safaricom and see who was sent money recently. Then they get that 2nd person's ID and DOB and suspend the line. Then initiate a reversal from inside safaricom's systems back to the first victim. Then that's when they initiate the new reversal to get back the initial amount