South Africa: Scam Alert! Ignore Facebook Accounts Offering Fake Loans in the Name of Kenyan Governor Gladys Wanga

13 August 2024
Africa Check (Johannesburg)
By Grace Gichuhi

Scam alert! Ignore Facebook accounts offering fake loans in the name of Kenyan governor Gladys Wanga

IN SHORT: These two Facebook accounts are scams using the name of politician Gladys Wanga to offer fake loans.

The Facebook accounts GOVERNOR GLADYS WANGA LOANS and Mama Gladys Wanga loans are offering loans to Kenyans on Facebook.

These accounts use the name and photos of Kenyan politician Gladys Wanga, the governor of Homa Bay county.

Homa Bay is about 400 kilometres northwest of the capital, Nairobi.

The loans offered range between KSh10,000 and KSh200,000 (US$75 to $1,530). Applicants are promised approval within five minutes. To access these loans, users must contact a listed phone number via WhatsApp.

These loan offers appear here, here and here.

Africa Check has previously exposed Facebook accounts impersonating the governor here and here.

So are these accounts and their offers legit? We checked.

Several red flags

Poor grammar in the accounts' posts is an early sign that the ads are a scam. These include random capitalisation, misspellings and odd punctuation.

A prominent Kenyan governor would likely have a professional social media team.

Another red flag is the request to communicate privately on WhatsApp. This is usually an attempt to scam users or steal their personal information.

When we contacted the listed number on WhatsApp, posing as interested borrowers, we received a list of names of allegedly successful loan recipients.

We were then asked how much we could pay in security fees to proceed with the loan application. The fee varied depending on the loan amount - the higher the loan, the higher the security fee.

The accounts emphasise choosing a loan amount that matches what you can afford for the security fee, claiming the process only takes 5-10 minutes after sending the fee.

Wanga's official page is Governor Gladys Wanga. It is verified by Meta and has 452,000 followers. There are no loan offers on her verified page.

The accounts in question are fake and their offers are a scam.

Read the original story, with links and other resources.
Africa Check is a non-partisan organisation which promotes accuracy in public debate and in the media. Twitter @AfricaCheck and www.africacheck.org

Tagged:
Copyright © 2024 Africa Check. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica publishes around 500 reports a day from more than 100 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.