Two suspects in custody for forgery of logbooks

Two suspects have been detained for seven days by a Makadara court, for forgery of logbooks and obtaining credit by false pretences.

The duo, Timothy Mwangi and Peter Nyaga will spend their Christmas holidays behind bars, as detectives complete investigations into their involvement in the high-level fraud.

Their arrest follows a comprehensive expose by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations detectives on how crooked officials at the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) collude with rogue staff working in Microfinace institutions and street brokers.

According to the DCI, detectives discovered that one motor vehicle registration number and its logbook would be registered to more than one vehicle and the fraudulent logbook used to secure loans from banks and microfinance.

Before the bonafide owner of the logbook realizes that his logbook has secured a loan, auctioneers from the microfinance involved commandeer the car to sell the vehicle for not servicing their loan.

In one such case, a man living in garden estate was driving a car belonging to his wife along the Thika superhighway, when his vehicle was suddenly blocked by another. Four men jumped out of the vehicle and confronted the man asking him to hand over the keys to the vehicle immediately.

In a scene reminiscent of a carjacking, the badly shaken man surrendered the keys thinking that carjackers had attacked him. Along the way, he learnt that the men were auctioneers sent by microfinance to impound the vehicle for defaulting on a loan.

The man inquired from his wife whether she had secured a loan using the vehicle’s logbook, but she was equally shocked to learn that her logbook had been used to secure a loan yet she still had her original copy.

Detectives immediately took over investigations into the matter and discovered that the two suspects had used a logbook under vehicle registration number KCU 244A illegally registered to a Toyota Harrier, to acquire credit of Ksh 876,000 from Avanzar Financial Solutions.

Detailed investigation however established that motor vehicle registration number KCU 244A was genuinely registered to a Nissan Serena belonging to the genuine owner Beatrice Kerubo.

The sleuths also discovered that the two suspects had acquired over Ksh 4 million from MyCredit and Bidii Credit limited, using one logbook. This is after Bidii Credit Limited advanced Ksh 2.1 Million to Timothy Mwangi on April 20, 2021, and before they collected the joint ownership logbook from NTSA, discovered that the logbook already had been transferred to someone else.

Further investigations into this scam revealed that Mwangi’s accomplice had used the same logbook to secure a facility of Ksh 2.2 Million from MyCredit Limited on May 27, 2021.

This revelation coupled with last week’s discovery of hundreds of genuine logbooks at a cybercafé in Ngara, further cast the National Transport and Safety Authority on the spot, for double registration of vehicles and loss of vehicles belonging genuine owners to fraudsters.

Cybercrime experts based at the DCI headquarters have since joined their counterparts seconded to the National Transport and Safety Authority to smoke out the crooked officials at NTSA behind this high level scam that has left motorists worried that they could be driving vehicles already used as collateral to secure loans for shadowy individuals.

The images of the two suspected fraudsters who acquired loans using people’s logbooks have been posted for members of the public and victims who may have fallen victim to their machinations, to come forward and report at DCI’s Serious Crimes unit.