Clay Muganda
30 June 2007
Nairobi — It is better written than said.
That was the line used by a cellular phone service provider to encourage subscribers to text more and talk less. Or it was just to promote the use of Short Message Service (SMS) among subscribers who needed to stay in touch but were discovering that talk was not cheap as it was being touted to be.
And it came to pass, that more and more subscribers heeded the SMS call, and even the providers started running promotions in which entries were being submitted through SMS. Other companies followed suit.
And then fraudsters took over, forcing many companies to buy space in the media and warn customers about the SMS racketeers who were sending texts telling them they had won prizes from certain firms. To redeem them, they needed to pay some amount.
Placed advertisement
"People were sent to us, but we did not run an SMS-based promotion," says Charles Njogu of Kenol-Kobil which placed an advertisement in the press early this week.
"We got people coming to collect their prizes from us based on texts they had received, informing them they had won," he says.
In many cases, subscribers receive text messages about their "winnings" and they are then told that in order to receive their prizes, they have to send airtime to given numbers. Sometimes, they are given bank accounts to send money to in order to get their "winnings" processed.
"We had people coming to claim cars they had won," says Mark Paul of General Motors marketing department.
"Apparently, we had not run a promotion and we were telling these people that this was a fraud because the text itself was poorly written and could not have come from us," added Mr Paul .
For GM, sometimes it even bordered on the absurd.
"Since these fraudsters get numbers randomly, some of the people who received the texts were our own employees," says Mr Paul.
"But they knew no such kind of promotion was being run," he says.
Apparently, the reason why people tended to believe the text-car message was because Safaricom and Celtel, the mobile phone service providers, had run such promotions.
Apart from the mobile phone companies, there were also other companies which were, or had been running, SMS-based promotions and this tended to give credence to the fraudsters claims.
Hard to trace
"It was very hard to trace the senders so we told those who came to us to report to the police," says GM's Paul of those people who had already complied with the "requirement" and sent airtime or deposited money in the bank accounts they had been given.
"Some people came to ask us before acting on the text, but others went ahead and sent money and airtime and there was very little we could do because we did not run such a promotion," he said.
But the car dealer was not the only company targeted by the fraudsters.
Mumias Sugar Company also had to place an advertisement in the Press denying claims that it was running a promotion.
"We were not running a promotion and we had not had one in a very long time," says Pamela Lutta, the corporate affairs manager of Mumias.
If GM had people going for cars, Mumias did not have "claimants" for sugar. Instead, they were going to claim cash prizes.
"In our previous promotion, we were giving cash so it seems the fraudsters know which companies to target," says Lutta.
"They were picking on reputable companies with good corporate image which people had little reason to doubt because they have the capability to give away such prizes running in to hundreds of thousands of shillings," she says.
Asking their prizes
But even after placing the advertisements in the Press, "winners" did not stop calling. "There are others who called as recent as two weeks ago asking about their prizes," says Lutta, adding that they passed the numbers from which the texts had come from to their security office.
People were also told to collect their prizes from British American Tobacco which was not at that time running any SMS-based raffle.
"Most of those who came to BAT were getting messages that they had won up to Sh100,000 and there were required to either send mobile phone airtime or cash through money transfer firms," says Maureen Sande of BAT's internal communications department.
"We could not establish if any of them complied but many preferred to confirm with us first and we told them it is a hoax," he says.
Since people were going to BAT's office and factory at Industrial Area and security officers were having rough time explaining to them that they had not won, the firm posted notices at its premises first before buying space in the media and warning the public at large.
"After we placed advertisements in the press, the "claims' fizzled out," says Sande.
Other companies targeted were Farmers Choice, Bidco, Colgate-Palmolive, Coca Cola, Nakumatt, East Africa Breweries Limited and even Safaricom and Celtel themselves which placed a joint advertisement warning the public.
In an earlier interview, Claire Ruto, the Celtel corporate and regulatory affairs director said the scam was being perpetrated by fraudsters who were bent on cheating the public and by the upsurge of sales promotions in the country.
Well-organised clique
"This is the work of well-organised clique of people who have got the idea that they can make money out of it," Safaricom's CEO Michael Joseph said, and added that it will stop when people become aware.
But it seemed their hands were tied and apart from placing the advertisements, there was very little they could do,
"We would really like to stop it but we cannot stop people from using SMS," the Safaricom boss said. The only way to stop it is to tell people to stop responding to such texts, because if there is no money to gain, it will definitely stop." Celtel noted that there is a bigger challenge in combating such menace: Lack of information on the subscribers who are perpetrating the scam.
"We do not have their personal data," Ruto said, with Joseph adding that there was a proposal that phone companies get people's details like identity card numbers before hooking them up like has been done in other countries.
"In principle, this is a good idea but it is a challenge to implement here in Kenya," says Mr Joseph, pointing out at rural areas, it would be difficult to ask for copies of identity cards in places where there are no facilities like photocopy machines. Further, it was going to lock out those under the ages of 18 from accessing mobile phones yet "this is a new era in mobile communication."
Even the other companies which had been targeted could only tell the victims to report to the police because they could not trace the perpetrators themselves.
And even if traced, they can only be prosecuted by the State for using false pretences.
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