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Letter from Africa: The lure of the get-rich-quick scam in Kenya



In our series of letters from African journalists, Kenyan broadcaster Waihiga Mwaura writes about cryptocurrency scams, including one that traded on his name to fleece investors.

Short presentational grey line
I got a call from a doctor I did not know, asking whether I had interviewed a Kenyan billionaire about a new Bitcoin product on some nondescript website.

I sighed with concern because I knew he had fallen victim to a two-year-old online scam which alleged that along with a local billionaire, I had endorsed a cryptocurrency trading platform.

Despite my best efforts to warn Kenyans about the scam via my social media platforms, it seems that the conmen had kept changing web addresses and strategies to target vulnerable Kenyans, who wake up hopeful that the day will bear better tidings.

In what is a mix of high appetite for risk - and desperation - many fall for Ponzi schemes that initially seem like an answer to prayer.

US citizen arrested
The latest scam to be unearthed in Kenya was around the app named Amazon Web Worker Africa, which claimed to be an affiliate of Amazon Inc and was accessible via a mobile and web application.

It had nothing to do with the global retail giant.

A few weeks back, investors in Amazon Web Worker woke up to find the app had been deleted from the Google Play Store without official communication and their investment, for some running into thousands of dollars, was now inaccessible.

The proposal had been simple - get paid for referring others to the app and also get paid for saving your money on the app. You were promised a percentage of returns as your principal investment remained safe.

As soon as the app vanished, hundreds of Kenyans flooded various social media platforms to express their concerns, with some lamenting that close friends and family had introduced them to the "investment opportunity".

The good news was that the Kenyan authorities have announced the arrest of a 50-year-old American alleged to be involved in what became known as the "Amazon Web Worker scam".

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