Unsuspecting Kenyans are losing their hard earned money to a syndicate of conmen plying their fleecing schemes at Ndarugu building stones quarries in Juja.
The cons masquerade as quarry employees or owners.
Tens of enthusiastic home builders have been deceived in elaborate schemes where they end up paying money to the cons right at the sites of the stones.
Many of these fraud cases have been reported in nearby police station with the two that happened on September 12 being reported at Juja police station.
Already, the directorate of criminal investigations have launched a probe to nab the cartel, with officers privy to it saying the conmen’s days are numbered.
In the first case, Samson* was conned of Sh11,500 by the cons who pretended they would sell the rejects of the stones to him.
Apparently, accompanied by two friends they had visited the quarry in a lorry they had come with from Mwea and bought the stones at the office as normal.
However as the stones were being loaded onto the vehicle, a man who pretended to be a senior employee at the quarry told Samson he could sell him the rejects at a good price.
They sealed the deal quickly with the man even filling in delivery forms and having Samson sign it and he paid the man Sh11,500 through MPESA.
But when he hired a lorry to pick up the rejects, he was shocked to learn he had been conned.
On the same day, Ken* from Nyeri accompanied by a friend alighted at Juja town where some young men posing as drivers competed to land the job of transporting the stones for him.
After avoiding several of them, he finally entered into a deal with a young man who claimed to be driver and even offered his turn boy to take Ken around to compare the prices in various quarries.
This purported driver used mobile phone number 0724236575 and is registered on MPESA as Simon Thendu Nyambura.
“The turn boy was a young man probably in his mid-20s with singly hair and wearing track suits. He was talkative and sounded knowledgeable on quarry matters,” Ken described him.
Before they left the first quarry, the turn boy beckoned a man they called Njoro who appeared busy inspecting a tractor.
After bargaining for a short time, the man who had initially said he sells a piece of Ndarugu stone at Sh22 agreed to sell at Sh20 and then left them.
The turn boy took them to other nearby quarries but none had good stones like the first one.
On returning back, they found Njoro with some men masquerading as mechanics inspecting the tractor and even before Ken could pay another lorry appeared, a man jumped out and Njoro wrote him a delivery.
It was Ken’s turn and convinced MPESA is safe because it can be tracked, he sent Sh30,250 to the number 0723108523 registered as Joseph Njoroge.
Njoro proceeded to write him a delivery note and issued both to another man and told him to proceed and have stones loaded onto lorries.
By the time Ken realised he had been conned long after the men had surreptitiously left, Njoro had already withdrawn the money and it was too late for Safaricom to revert the transaction.
His phone then became unreachable while the “driver” who had provided the turn boy refused to answer the call.
And last week unsuspecting Kenyans were combined over Sh200,000 in the same quarries, according to a lorry driver who requested for anonymity.
An elderly man putting up real estate units lost the most after arriving with three lorries and falling prey to the fake managers who quickly conned him Sh72,000.
“As soon as he paid up they disappeared leaving him and his workers attempting to load stones he did not own. He sweat a lot and almost fainted on realising he had been conned," said the driver.
He said the cons target people who are not aware of the how the quarries operate.
Even as police promised to investigate and bring to book the crooks, they urged Kenyans to be careful not to fall into the frauds at quarries.
It also leaves many questions unanswered for instance why cons operate and steal from people at quarries under the very eyes of quarry employees and owners.
The quarries management in a bid to protect the stones buyers have placed several signage warning people to be wary of the conmen but still people get duped out of the money.
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