Four People Arrested for Altering Motor Vehicle Logbooks to Obtain Credit

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Four suspects have been arrested for allegedly altering a motor vehicle logbook and collaborating to secure credit using the same document.

In the case, a man identified as Gideon Kiarie was financed by the Cooperative Bank to buy a lorry after depositing Sh1.2 million and agreeing to pay monthly installments of Sh166,000 in 2020.

After a few months, Kiarie was unable to make the monthly payments and he signed a deal with a buyer, who agreed to deposit the remaining amount until it was fully serviced. Unfortunately, the new owner of the truck passed away a few months later before serving the amount in full.

The deceased’s son decided to put the lorry on sale because he had no interest in the truck business. Frederick Kilonzo approached him seeking to buy the vehicle. Unaware that Kilonzo was a fraudster, the son accepted two cheques of Sh1.3 million each which later bounced.

“By the time the owner realized, initial ownership details of Gideon Kiarie and Cooperative bank had been erased from the NTSA portal and replaced with others; Frederick Kilonzo and MyCredit limited, a finance company,” a report by DCI says.

It emerged that Kilonzo used the lorry’s logbook to secure a loan of Sh2.8 million from MyCredit Ltd but only Sh1.5 was wired in his account. MyCredit Ltd then auctioned the lorry within 10 days for Sh4.5 million to one John Muigai against the initial Sh6.5 million which the vehicle had been insured by the Cooperative Bank.

"It is while Muigai was regularizing the vehicle’s ownership, that he shockingly learned that the lorry did not belong to Frederick Kilonzo and MyCredit limited as he had been made to believe," detectives said.

Cooperative Bank said it was still the owner of the truck and had not transferred its ownership. A search at the NTSA portal revealed that the original details of the lorry’s ownership were erased and replaced with Frederick Kilonzo and MyCredit Ltd.

“Crooked NTSA officials who claim that the system was hacked into, working with brokers and unscrupulous traders had developed new documentation for the lorry and used the fake papers to acquire the loan,” DCI says.

The four suspects will be charged with obtaining credit by false pretenses, forgery, uttering a false document, issuing of bad cheques, and fraudulent disposition of mortgaged goods.
 
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