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As he approached 50 years, Paul Kamau yearned for the good life that comes with loads of money.
He figured that disposing of part of his inheritance to get money would get him what he wanted. It worked, and by March 1, 2022, aged 46; he was the owner of a mobile phone wallet that had Sh300,000.
“I felt good. With money, age becomes just another useless arithmetic to be cited by the idle. Money brings back youth, keeps the heart beating and massages the soul to remain optimistic,” he said.
In high spirits, Kamau first travelled from his Maragua hometown to good spots in Thika and Murang’a to enjoy himself.
However, there was a problem.
“I developed a strong urge to be noticed. I could only get noticed among my people, and on April 4, decided to party in my hometown of Maragua,” said Kamau.
The decision to visit a bar on Police Road ended up being his costliest.
“I hit the town when I had Sh283,000 in my phone wallet. For the past month, I had only spent Sh17,000, but on this April 4, alone, from 4pm until the next morning, I spent Sh283,400, the Sh400 being an overdraft,” he narrated.
What did he buy?
“Some bottles of alcohol and the rest was transferred to the mobile phones of two waitresses and the bar’s till,” he said.
Kamau woke up in a banana plantation behind the bar the next morning.
“When I came to, I wondered who had removed the roof over my house since my gaze went straight up to the skies. I looked around and wondered about the banana plantation … I was now alert and discovered that I was waking up in a shamba, not in a house,” he said.
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His immediate fear, he said, was that he had been sexually assaulted “since that is the norm here in Maragua once one is overwhelmed by too much booze”.
Kamau quickly established that he had not be raped and was glad.
He felt for his phone in his pockets and did not find it. He searched the area where he had woken up, to no avail. He only had his identity card, bits of cigarettes, a matchbox and Sh35. He went to a shop and bought cigarettes worth Sh30 and chewing gum.
“Pulling hard at my cigarette, trying to make sense of my situation, I went home, which is about 250 metres from that bar and took a bath. I then ventured out, dismissing last night’s misfortune. I still had money in my phone wallet, so I thought,” he explained.
He took a spare phone from his house and went to an M-Pesa shop and had his Sim card replaced.
“It was around 9am and I was missing a beer. I fixed my Sim card on the phone as I sipped my beer,” he said.
Kamau activated his M-Pesa account and populated its menu.
“I casually put my phone in my shirt pocket as I ordered another beer so as to start thinking on how to manage drinking too much to a point of failing to reach home,” he said.
While on his third beer, he decided that Maragua was not treating him right; how come in other towns he had not as much as suffered a fall, let alone sleeping in the cold all night?
“To be honest, I was feeling ashamed, since the waitresses kept giving me uneasy looks. I thought they were genuinely sympathising with me for a drinking session gone wrong last night,” he said.
He decided to pay his bill and leave.
“I received a message that I had insufficient funds in my account. I repeated the process twice and on the third try, now all apprehensive, decided to check my balance,” he said.
The response that he had not a single coin in his phone wallet left him cold.
“I had a bill to pay. It was worth Sh600. I knew my Fuliza (phone overdraft) limit was Sh400, but it was better paying Sh400 first, and agonising on how to pay Sh200 later. After all, the bar staff knew me,” he said.
The Fuliza feedback was that it was not possible to get the Sh400 overdraft since he had outstanding debt of similar amount.
“I felt an urge to scream and hit something,” he said.
He stood up and left the bar without paying “and I was sure if anyone dared stop me, I would have given them a punch”.
He wanted to know how the money moved from his phone.
“I sweet-talked a friend who gave me a loan of Sh2,000. I went to a Murang’a town-based customer care centre and I was given a statement,” he said.
He studied the transactions, his eyes moving quickly to April 4.
“There were four transactions — Sh93,000 and Sh90,000 twice, before a Sh10,000 transfer to a till number left me with an overdraft of Sh400,” he said.
Kamau took a matatu from Murang’a to Maragua and as he alighted, handed the conductor a Sh100 note and did not even bother to ask for his Sh50 change.
“Waiting for change was wasting time. The names that had received money were well known to me. They were the waitresses in that Maragua bar. The till number was for the bar,” he said.
When he confronted them with the evidence of their treachery, they told him that he had volunteered to treat them to a surprise.
“They insisted that I had sent them the cash without any duress and the Sh10, 000 was for a room and a woman I was with. I felt sick and even vomited,” he said.
He tried reasoning with the bar owner, who insisted that he believed his workers.
Kamau did not know how the two women got to know his Pin numbers to effect the fraud “but I suspect they lurked behind me during my drunkenness as I transacted and copied it, laced my alcohol with sedatives and I passed out”.
On April 11, Kamau went to Maragua police station to report the theft.
“I complained officially and I was given OB Number 35. What followed was the arrest of the bar owner and his two waitresses. The bar’s sale and stock books and their mobile phones were also confiscated alongside the till number transaction logs,” he said.
The bar owner, who is a politician, caved in because he was in the middle of campaigns ahead of the August 9, 2022 General Election. He feared bad publicity.
“At the station, he readily agreed to pay me back my money. To show goodwill, he gave me Sh5,000. I was very thirsty, and I left them discussing the case as I headed to the nearest bar,” he said.
The three were released since Kamau appeared to embrace out-of-court settlement.
“It took me three days to exhaust the cash and I went back to the police station to have the suspects pay me my money,” he said.
“The politician was called and he directed that I go to his bar, be served until he came back in the evening.
“I literally ran to the place, and by the time he came back, I was a happy man and at peace. We laughed off the theft on my phone wallet and as I left, he gave me Sh5,000 and a receipt that indicated that so far he had paid me Sh20,000,” said Kamau.
The investigating officer on my case called me and accused me of taking law enforcers for a ride.
“He told me to decide whether I wanted the suspects arrested and charged or I withdraw the complaint. I had not been paid all my money, so withdrawing it was not an option. I could also not opt for court because there was goodwill to pay me back my cash,” he said.
The officer listened to his argument and asked him to present a signed out-of-court settlement agreement.
“That is how I and the politician visited an advocate and agreed that he would pay me my money in instalments of Sh50,000 each. But I am yet to get a full refund these eight months later,” he said, admitting that he blundered.