Nairobi — Six individuals suspected to be involved in altering land documents have been arrested by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI).
According to the investigative agency, the six are believed to be members of a cartel involved in defrauding Kenyans.
The probe revealed that their operation involves changing ownership of land parcels in both the physical files and the digital platform using fake documents.
The officer commanding land fraud investigations unit Wilheim Kimutai stated that they
were found printing fake land documents in their office at Anpemu house within Ngara.
"Ngala receives instructions from different clients among them rogue brokers and rogue ministry of land officials who direct him to print fake documents and append signatures and stamps of ministry officials without their knowledge," Kimutai stated.
Among the items confiscated include four mobile phones, two typewriters, four printers, scanners, eleven incomplete certificate of titles and fifteen deed plans.
Also seized during the operation were two survey plans, a CPU, about 1000 unprinted title deed papers, Seventeen (17) letters of allotments, assorted computation files, one logbook, one smart Driving licence and about 100 different date codes.
According to Kimutai a search was also conducted at the residence of one of the suspects and several items were confiscated.
Their modus operandi according to Kimutai is that the brokers first source for fraudulent jobs from different clients for recording at the manual and digital registries at the Ministry of lands.
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The most targeted parcels include prime undeveloped parcels, those owned by foreigners, the elderly and the deceased.
Once the brokers have the targeted parcels at hand, they then engage another suspect to prepare and print fake land documents.
Thereafter the brokers engage some rogue ministry staff to insert the fake documents into the physical files and once that is done they upload the fake documents into the ardhi sasa platform.
While this process is ongoing, the brokers have already identified a buyer and once the fake documents are uploaded to the ardhi sasa platform, the buyer can conduct a search and by then ownership will have changed.
In cases where the parcel is not for immediate sale, the brokers transfer the parcels to themselves using proxy individuals or proxy companies.
During the arrest one of the suspects swallowed his memory card so as to conceal evidence.
Another suspect ran away from the scene leaving his documents and phone at the scene.
