Rich men targeted in new violent robberies hatched in fake online love affairs
On November 28 last year, American Philipe Chiliade landed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to meet his gay lovers whom he had fallen in love with after a brief encounter on Facebook.
Chiliade was chauffeured out of the airport in a cab and taken to a single room in Pipeline estate in Nairobi, where his life would turn into misery, in the hands of the purported lovers.
He was extensively tortured and robbed of everything by men who had promised romance but left him nursing serious injuries while slowly accepting the reality that he had lost everything to lust.
He was rescued by members of the public who intervened and intercepted a car he was being driven in back to the JKIA – where he was to be dumped.
The man driving the car - Fredrick Mutua - was handed over to officers at Embakasi police station.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) interrogated Mutua who claimed that he had been invited by his cousins to cook for Chiliade – their friend – as they attended to some other matters and travelled from Kithyoko in Machakos County to do the errand for a fee.
Detectives believed him after they established that Chiliade had been hoodwinked to travel to Nairobi from South Africa and had not communicated to Mutua prior to the incident. They were seemingly wrong.
Mutua was among the four-man gang and his three accomplices had escaped with Chiliade’s money believed to be more Sh2 million, his travel documents and other personal belongings.
Chiliade had left his husband after he was hoodwinked by his newfound lovers, unaware that they had a different agenda to rob him.
On December 2, Inspector Anderson Miriti of Embakasi DCI offices presented Mutua at Makadara law courts seeking orders to hold him for a week to assist police trace his cousins.
Mr Miriti told Senior Principal Magistrate Stephen Jalang’o that investigators were gathering evidence from JKIA and Kithyoko where the suspects were believed to have taken the loot, and Mutua would be a prosecution witness.
Mutua was freed thereafter as DCI continued to pursue his three cousins wanted for the crime.
Everything went silent until Sunday, October 11, this year when Mutua was arrested in Ruaka, where he was caught red-handed in the process of torturing and robbing Turkish national Bubak Amrullah.
Police say Amrullah had been lured into the house by Mutua’s female accomplice Catherine Mumbi Kivuva when he (Mutua) and his cousins Bernard Mbunga and Kelvin Nzioki descended on him.
The DCI detectives from Lang’ata were trailing Mutua and the rest in connection with a robbery in Imara Daima, Nairobi, where an Asian businessman was robbed after he went to meet his online lover who invited him to her house for intercourse.
The businessman had gone to Mutua’s cousin Mary Mukii Kioko’s house when he was attacked.
Ms Kioko, an actress with a production outfit in Machakos, was charged with violently robbing the victim of Sh453,000 jointly with others while armed with a knife on September 22 in Lang’ata.
Her cousins, Mr Mutua, Mr Mbunga and Mr Nzioki are all in custody at the Nyayo police station while Ms Kioko is awaiting bail and bond application ruling after Chief Magistrate Abdul Lorot of Kibera law courts asked for her social inquiry report before setting the terms.
The four suspects in police custody had escaped the DCI’s dragnet in Imara Daima in Embakasi on October 3, where their cousins Ms Kioko and Mr Mutua’s brother Gideon Mbusu were arrested.
Lang’ata police commander Gregory Mutiso said police have identified the online dating-related robbery as a new trend in crime involving criminals who are luring men on the internet.
Mr Mutiso said the gangs are targeting wealthy men who have families and reputations at stake and they increased when people were forced to work from home or stay indoors after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr Mutiso said the biggest challenge in taming the vice is laxity by men to report and unwillingness to pursue justice after the incidents.
For example, the Asian victim allegedly robbed by Ms Kioko and her accomplices claimed he was abducted in Nairobi West although he met the suspects on Mombasa Road.
“We have seen reluctance among some men who don’t want to report because some of them are family men and are fearing for their families. We have a challenge because others don’t even want the cases to proceed. I know many have been robbed but don’t want to come out because they fear the embarrassment,” Mr Mutiso said.
“One of the cases, the complainant who was robbed nearly half a million, has completely declined to record a statement. Even if you take the suspect to court, they will eventually be acquitted.”
“I am warning men to be careful. If you are seeking a relationship, date a person that you can see and not online because you don’t know the person you are chatting with. These men are using pictures of beautiful and curvy women to lure you and very few (men) can resist,” he added.
Mr Mutiso is appealing to men who have been robbed in this manner to come out and report.
He says an identification parade shall be conducted to pick out the culprits, then cases shall be referred to the police jurisdictions where the crimes happened.
The police boss said detectives are ready to help all men who have been robbed in the same way and promised confidentiality.
The latest incidents are not isolated and not just targeting foreigners.
A 38-year-old woman who lured her online lover, before four men including one claiming to be her husband stormed the house and joined her in allegedly robbing him, was charged with robbery with violence before the Makadara law courts on June 24.
Eunice Wambui was charged with robbing Dennis Ntabo of his phone worth Sh23,000, an ATM card, a chain worth Sh1,500 and Sh5,000 in Kahawa West in Nairobi on May 18.
She was also accused of transferring Sh15,946 from his M-Pesa account.
Mr Ntabo, 32, was delivering electronics to a client and decided to contact Ms Wambui - his then Facebook girlfriend - to quarantine in her house because he could not beat the then 7pm curfew deadline.
Ms Wambui took him to her house and, a few minutes later, men including one claiming to be her husband, stormed the house and accosted her lover, accusing him of sleeping with his wife. Mr Ntabo was terrorised overnight and robbed.
Protection and Safety Association of Kenya (PROSAK) Secretary-General Deelano Kiilu said the incidents, which are spiking in the country, are a result of the Covid-19 pandemic because people have been forced to stay at home and remain online.
Because of this, Kiiu says, men on the internet begin to live in the universe surrounded by galaxies of online activities.
This, combined with psychological pressure and loneliness especially for single men, Kiilu says, has made negative elements in our society to begin to take advantage of some of the traps that are mostly used in espionage and previously in intelligence activities.
“What we are seeing is a trend called the honey trap. A man will stumble on a picture or a video of a very beautiful and attractive 'woman' online who he will then be tempted to reach out to and to chat with. She will seem very open and willing to talk to him and will slowly entice him into a relationship that is purely on the internet,” Kiilu says.
“When a man believes he is going to get value out of that relationship, he is then lured into a trap of physical entanglement with this 'woman' but that occurs at either the 'woman’s' home or in a secluded location where he can be taken advantage of by 'her' collaborators in the activity.”
Mr Kiilu said the women are aware that psychologically men are attracted by beauty so the women are using that allure to draw the man into the honey trap.
The worst scenarios that have been perpetrated are men posing as women online to entice a man into an entanglement.
When the man reaches the destination, he finds men waiting for him.
They will pounce on him, blackmail and torture him as in the recent cases.
Mr Kiilu said people create personas on various online dating portals.
Sometimes, Mr Kiilu said, the traps can be laid on an innocent Facebook page, Instagram or Snapchat and other dating sites like Tinder and Grindr.
He then finds himself lured into an online conversation and what you will find is that these people are very reluctant to even have a telephone conversation but are willing to have a lot of online chatting, say all the right things and lure a man, Mr Kiilu said.
“When they use this honey trap to lure a man to get to the particular location, the game is over. He is fleeced of what he has and abandoned. In a lot of the cases we have seen, since men are too embarrassed because of the situations they have gone through, they don’t even report it. They decide to leave and live very quietly,” Mr Kiilu said.
“In one of the cases that happened in Ngumo estate, a man woke up and found himself naked in a bed and the hotel people told him that he came in with some women and paid for everything and he woke up three days later naked in bed without a single cent and his bank accounts cleaned. His ATM cards had been used.”
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