At least seven Kenyan women have been conned of Sh3.5m by a Twitter user who promised them love and the allure of wealth.
The Twitter user according to the women lied about his love for them, the promise of babies and a puppy.
Emmanuel Masinde, 27, employed his Twitter inbox to swindle seven women, in a style bearing similarities with the Netflix-trending documentary, Twinder Swindler.
The women, according to Nation, a Kenya-based newspaper had high expectations of the swindler. His expensive year imaginary properties helped to ease his way through to the women’s hearts, as they took huge loans for him. The loans have been difficult to repay according to the women.
In a bid to get their money back, the women have formed a Whatsapp group called ‘Co-wives.’
The women have reported the case at the KICC Police Station and authorities have launched investigations into the scam.
Masinde, according to the women is a smooth talker and a man who has a good fashion sense. They were however stunned to also discover everything he fronted was concocted.
“I met and fell in love (with him) on Twitter, I was swindled out of Sh1,220,000. I never imagined this would happen to me, but it has ” a 28-year old lawyer and one of the victims said.
Masinde’s target appeared to be, according to the profiles of his victims, women who were desperate to settle down and had good jobs on their hands. His swindling was also found to have caught Kenyans based abroad who were seeking marriage.
He faked bank documents, tellers, and cheques and claimed to work in a law firm owned by a prominent politician. In other lies, be claimed to work at the office of a popular government official and also fronted to be the son of a National Land Commission official.
The alleged swindler also sold the dummy of wanting to quickly settle down to the women and used expensive cars which he claimed belongs to his mother.
Similarities were found in the structure of his messages to all the women.
“The flashy talk was a lot. One time I asked him about the Range Rovers he drove and that is when he told me that his mother is a former senior official at the National Land Commission, while his father is an ex-CEO at one of the state-owned energy corporations, ” one of the victims said about Masinde.
“He said that he runs the family business which involves construction projects around Nairobi and that the family had a chopper business as well, besides owning a huge chunks of shares in other companies.”
The 28-year old lawyer who met the alleged swindler said he drove a Land Cruiser with registration of the vehicle found to be of a company.
His evidence of financial strength were all convincing according to the lawyer swindled.
“His way of borrowing money is very well-calculated and backed by irrefutable evidence and receipts. Masinde told me that his family owned a regional company that rents out and sells choppers and that they had sold one to the family of a very powerful politician,”
He also lied about his mother’s chopper which he claimed needed an insurance cover. The Kenyan lawyer said she gave him Sh1.2m ($10,500).
To other women, he also lied about being a diabetes patient and would eat diabetics’ food on every date.
One of his victims who called him Gift also revealed how he swindled her. The lady is a director at a big Kenyan company at the heart of the capital, Nairobi.
“I first interacted with Gift (Masinde) at the beginning of September last year over a tax matter where he sent me a job application in my line of work. We began engaging frequently from that point and developed a mutual friendship, which saw us meet physically for the first time around mid-November, shortly after which he raised the issue of a BMW X-5 that he had imported being held at the Mitchell Cotts CFS, and it was to be auctioned due to unpaid storage, importation and taxation costs which had accumulated to Sh933,890 (USD 8,200), and were continuing to accrue at a rate of Sh27,780 ($200) per day.”
In other claims by the young director, she said Masinde lied about his mother needing loans as she was under investigation for corruption.
She also took a loan to help him clear the concocted problem.
Masinde swindled other women including a 25-year old lecturer and mother of one. One of his other victims is a 23-year old Kenyan student in the UK who’d hoped to return to continue their love affair physically.
The student claims to have been swindled to the tune of Sh188,000 ($1,640).
Masinde’s Twitter bio reads “pick your struggle; something MUST kill a man.” He has denied all the allegations and according to Nation, he was on the verge of swindling another woman to the tune of Sh700,000 before being found out.