Slain blogger Albert Ojwang's family spokesperson, Kenneth Ouma, has revealed that his dad, Meshack Opiyo, lost a significant amount of money sent to his M-Pesa number.

Opiyo had received massive support from Kenyans after comedian Eric Omondi shared his number on social media and rallied fans to send their donations.

His two M-Pesa accounts were flooded with contributions, and they later opted for a paybill.

However, it didn't end well as part of the contributions was allegedly stolen in a scam that is under investigation.

Speaking on the Obinna show, Ouma revealed Opiyo lost his identification card (ID) at the City Mortuary in Nairobi and later couldn't make any M-Pesa transactions, as the SIM card had been swapped.

"At the City Mortuary, with the crowds and movements, he lost his ID. He couldn't make any M-Pesa withdrawals. When the money was full, we tried to send it to another number, but we couldn't for a whole night. We couldn't even transfer to M-Shwari or KCB. The line was already swapped," he said.

Ouma explained that when they visited Safaricom, they were told that someone close to where they were had either swapped the line or downloaded the M-Pesa app, denying them the authority over the line and running illegal transactions.

"We even bought a new phone, and when we tried to put the SIM card in, there was no network signal, and we went to Safaricom. They explained that somebody had swapped the SIM card or downloaded the Safaricom app. And that was somebody close to where we are and this person was making transactions. He didn't have the ID and when he got the ID, we did a SIM swap and stopped the illegal transaction on that line. Now we have a fraud investigation that is going on and it is in the hands of the investigation officers. That is when we will know the fraudsters and the amount stolen," he added.

His colleague, who was also on the show, revealed that the only amount that was in the line after replacing it was KSh 3,000.

Before the swap, all the money that was being sent to Opiyo's line was going to the fraudsters.

"Just to say that all the amount that was in that line got lost. The only amount found there was KSh 3,000, and that KSh 3,000 was sent after we had swapped."

In the same interview, Ouma revealed that the family had received KSh 2.06 million from the general public.

He also confirmed receipt of KSh 2 million and KSh 1 million donations from President William Ruto and Raila Odinga, respectively, bringing the total contributions to KSh 5.6 million.

The donations from the two politicians sparked an uproar.

Source: TUKO.co.ke