Cybercrime: Kenyan police nabs 22-year-old for $378,000 fraud on JamboPay

The Kenyan police have arrested a 26-year-old man accused of orchestrating a $378,000 (KSh 49 million) cybercrime on a local fintech platform, JamboPay.

According to reports, Joseph Momanyi was arrested on April 12 in Kahawa West, where security operatives recovered items such as a laptop, SIM cards registered under different names and multiple mobile phones.

He will also be remanded for seven days after he made his first court appearance on Tuesday.

“The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) claims Momanyi hacked into the financial system of Web Tribe Limited — the parent company of JamboPay — between July 19 and 24, 2024. Using customer profiles linked to platforms like KoraPay and Fincra. He reportedly tampered with account details and disabled phone numbers that receive one-time transaction alerts,” a statement reads.

In the cybercrime case, authorities explained that Momanyi operated a network of accomplices, using WhatsApp calls and fake identities to remain undetected. As a result, he took in $378,568 (KSh 49,095,968) into various M-Pesa wallets, tills, and bank accounts without raising alarms. 

“After gaining access to the JamboPay client portal through legitimate customer profiles of Korapay, Finera, and JamboPay transaction merchant accounts, the system hacker changed and disabled the client’s mobile numbers that received notification one-time PIN and thereby affected the transactions,” said detectives.

However, the fraudulent activity was exposed after Web Tribe reported suspicious activity on its systems. Web Tribe is a Kenyan IT business specialising in online payments, web applications, and network security.

As part of the investigations, officers at the Financial Investigations Unit noted that Momanyi confessed to having accomplices and recruited individuals to provide smuggled accounts for the transactions.

Also Read: Kwara emerges as ‘Yahoo Boys’ capital as EFCC arrests 134 fraudsters in March.

Momanyi’s cybercrime case comes amid a recent callout on a Kenyan loan app, Whitepath, which was fined a sum of KES 250,000 ($2,000) by Kenya’s Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) for violating data privacy laws.

The lender was accused of adding an individual as a guarantor without their consent and subjected them to debt collection calls after the borrower failed to pay back. 

Court records revealed that Dennis Caleb Owuor received a debt collection call from a Whitepath representative in November 2024. The caller notified that Owuor was added as a guarantor to a runaway borrower.

Despite Owuor’s claims to be unaware of being a guarantor, the caller failed to provide any clear explanation and kept on demanding the debt repayment from him. After several failed efforts by Owuor to stop the pestering, he complained to the ODPC about the breach of his privacy and harassment.

The growing cybercrime trend across Africa 

At the peak of data by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and gathered by Technext, about 134 cybercrime actors were arrested in March 2025, where Kwara State emerged as the Yahoo Boys capital of Nigeria, with 37 internet fraudsters.

The EFCC also arrested 161 Ponzi Scheme operators in March. The FCT, Abuja witnessed the highest number of arrests in this category with 133 while Niger state is next with 28 arrests.

In another cybercrime trend, EFCC Benin Zonal Directorate arrested a suspected fraudster, Olawole Sunday, who buys bank account details for fraudulent activities and purchases the information from individuals with whom he defrauds unsuspecting members of the public.

It was explained that his modus operandi involved encouraging young people to open multiple bank accounts, pay them either N25,000 or N50,000 for each account, and collect their bank details, including Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards.

Also in March, the Lagos State Police Command arrested four cybercrime suspects in an uncovered illegal hideout known as a “Yahoo School”. The cybercriminals, or Yahoo boys as they are called, were arrested alongside six trainees, which included a 12-year-old child, in the Iju area of the state.