Two suspects will spend their Christmas holidays behind bars after the Makadara court ordered them to be detained for 7 days for forgery of logbooks and obtaining credit by fraud.
The duo, Timothy Mwangi and Peter Nyaga, were arrested after detectives discovered that one motor vehicle registration number and its logbook was registered to more than one vehicle.
Along with the discovery, the logbook was also discovered to have been used to secure loans from banks and microfinance institutions without the owner’s consent.
The owner of the said vehicle, Beatrice Kerubo, reported a case to the DCI claiming her husband was hijacked by a group of men along the Thika superhighway who demanded that he hands over the keys to the vehicle immediately.
The men, it later emerged, were auctioneers sent by a microfinance institution to impound the vehicle for defaulting on a loan.
He later inquired with his wife Kerubo 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.
Upon probe, it was 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. The car was genuinely registered to a Nissan Serena owned by Kerubo.
They also discovered that the two suspects had acquired over Ksh.4 million from MyCredit and Bidii Credit limited, using one logbook.
This was 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, the logbook already had been transferred to someone else.
Further investigations into the case 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.
Their arrest followed an expose by the DCI on how four other NTSA officials were suspected to be behind a criminal enterprise that alters vehicle logbooks and defrauds owners by changing ownership.
“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,” stated the DCI.
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