A 29-year-old woman has been arrested in Blantyre for stealing money from people’s bank accounts.
Confirming the development was Blantyre police deputy publicist Constable Kelvin Nyirenda who identified the suspect as Edina Saopa from Mlonyeni village in the area of Traditional Authority Mlonyeni in Mchinji district.
Constable Nyirenda said the matter was reported to Blantyre police on 12th May, this year by a man aged 49.
The publicist said victim complained that he received a phone call from Saopa who claimed to be from TNM and was upgrading numbers that are on National Bank’s MO626 so that criminals shouldn’t steal from their accounts.
The victim revealed his account details to the suspect and in just five minutes he noticed several transactions happening in his account through phone messages which indicated that money mounting to K234,652.00 had been transferred from his account.
The complainant then went to the mobile company’s offices for assistance and they only managed to reverse K131,272.00 since the other money had already been cashed out.
Detectives from Blantyre police later managed to arrest Saopa.
According to the publicist, Saopa has so far admitted the crime and has revealed her co-accused who is Subiri Yusuf Utaka, 39 from Kamwendo village, T/A Zulu in Mchinji. district.
It is reported that Subiri is a murder convict serving a life sentence at Zomba Maximum prison who connived with Saopa and was in return getting a commission.
After a thorough search at Saopa’s house, 10 National Identity cards and 8 sim cards belonging to different people were recovered.
Saopa will be taken to court soon to answer charges of Prohibition of Trade and commerce contrary to section 92 of Electronic Transactions and Cyber Security Act (2016).
Meanwhile, police have advised people against disclosing their phone numbers that are connected to their bank accounts especially to unidentified people.
