A man was Wednesday arraigned at a Nairobi court for impersonating his dead father in an attempt to access his bank account that reportedly holds millions of shillings.
The prosecution told the court that Francis Mahenia Waweru alias James Waweru Ndegwa presented himself to the National Bank of Kenya on Harambee Avenue in Nairobi on Tuesday, March 23, 2021, pretending to be his dead father.
He reportedly handed over to the bank staff a digital form for application for mobile banking using his late father’s bank account.
Bank staff discovered the attempted fraud and had him seized for interrogation. It was then that Ndegwa revealed the deceased holder of the bank account was his father.
The accused told authorities that one of his friends told him that he had a contact at the bank who could help him access his late father’s money.
His friend picked him from Roysambu and took him to the National Bank headquarters, where he filed the form and gave the documents to customer care.
Ndegwa said he showed the bank his father’s and mother’s death certificates but the officers refused to authenticate the documents.
He said he was also in possession of his brother’s national ID card as the family desperately needed to access the funds.
The man’s father died in 2018 but his children have not been able to access the funds since then. The deceased is said to have had properties in posh parts of Nairobi, including Lavington and its environs, with income from those properties channeled to the National Bank account.
Ndegwa, who is a mitumba dealer, was charged with one count of personation. He denied the charges before Nairobi Chief Magistrate Martha Mutuku and was released on a cash bail of Sh50,000.
