A 29 years old woman has been arrested in Blantyre over the case of Prohibition of Trade and commerce contrary to section 92 of Electronic Transactions and Cyber Security Act (2016).

The matter was reported at Blantyre police station on 12th May, 2020 by Mr. Ian Namboya A. 49 years V. Matanya T/A. Mkanda D. Mulanje Occupation: procurement officer c/o Mkaka construction. He complained that he received a phone call from a personnel from TNM who was upgrading numbers that are on MO 626 so that criminals shouldn’t steal from their accounts.

Mr. Namboya obliged by revealing his account number but in just five minutes he noticed several transactions happening in his account through phone messages. The messages indicated that money was being withdrawn from the account using the number 0990504666 totalling to K234,652.00.

The complainant then went to Airtel offices for assistance but they only managed to reverse K131,272.00 since the other money had already been cashed out.

Detectives from Blantyre police station managed to arrest the suspect Edina Saopa 29 yrs V. Mlonyeni T/A. Mĺonyeni D. Mchinji.

Saopa has so far admitted the charge and has revealed her co-accused who is a masterminder in the syndicate. The masterminder is Subiri Yusuf Utaka 39 yrs from Kamwendo T/A. Zulu in Mchinji. Subiri is a Murder convict serving a life sentence at Zomba Maximum prison. Subiri connived with saopa an Airtel agent who in return was 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 the charges.

The police wishes to advise people against disclosing their phone numbers that are connected to their bank accounts especially to unidentified people.