19/04/2025
The crazy story of Gideon Kipkurui Rono. A Gen Z who led the FULIZA gang that stole Ksh 449M from Safaricom, bought cars and claimed to be FARMERS.
As Kenyans were grappling with the effects of Covid 19 & its disruptive regulations in 2020, somewhere in Bomet county a young lad had just landed in his soft-life era....
That kid was Gideon Kipkurui Rono
A student from Egerton University who after doing a heist had just secured his biggest bag ever on 20th July 2020. This bag allowed him to walk into Nakuru Equipment Supplies with Ksh 143K in cash the next day to buy his first ever machine. A Bajaj Boxer KMFZ 526E.
A bike unlike those of most customers which were used as a source of income. Giddy's bike was not a beast of burden, yake ilikuwa ya kupiga maraoundi mtaa.
Because he had discovered a better source of income that granted him another cheque 2 months later on 2nd Sept 2020, he was back to buy his 2nd bike. Which he paid in cash. Ksh 90K.
The seller was impressed and admired how business was booming for our young king. Unbeknownst to him, the business that was booming was a well thought out heist that had just started....
The Fuliza Heist.
An excellent identity theft crime where even the victim would not know.
You see coming from Bomet county, Giddy had seen the success of the Mulot gang but didn't like the constant hiding from the cops. So he decided to be different.
Like a treasure hunter, mans visited places in Bomet town where he knew lost ID cards were placed & acquired quite a number. He later bought a Safaricom MobiGo machine & used the IDs to register new Lines that opted into FULIZA loans in May 2020.
One ID card registered 5 SIM card lines so with let's say with 50 ID cards, Giddy registered 250 lines in his bedsitter. He borrowed a min of Ksh 300 bob which was transferred to his number when granted. 2-3 days later, he would dispose the sim cards.
A routine he repeated for weeks until Sept 2020 when he had acquired enough cash to buy 2 motorcycles,signalling that the business was ready to go large scale.
The only problem was how to get more ID cards to register new numbers. This forced Giddy to rope in some pals inorder to maximize profits na the first ninja on his dial was Isaac Kipkemoi, a 3rd yr student at St Paul's University, who was restricted in Limuru by the Covid lockdown rules.
However after hearing Giddy's plan, he was wowed by the its brilliance design he referred Giddy to a friend with the hopes of joining them later after the borders were open.
That friend was Mr Nelson Kamau.
Nelson Kamau was a simswap expert who linked Giddy to his destiny connector, Mr Peter Gitahi- an IT expert residing in Trans Nzoia.
Peter had access to the National Registration Bureau which allowed him to develop falsified identity cards that he used to register sim cards using his 13 Safaricom MobiGo machines.
After registration, he sold the cards to Giddy whose only hustle now was to FULIZA, cutting the operational costs by almost 50%.
Having tasted success, Giddy invested heavily.
Together with Nelson, Giddy bought these Sim cards, moved to Nakuru and rented an apartment in Kiamunyi Estate which served as their headquarters.
They then roped in some friends and together, the team registered thousands of Sim cards into Fuliza
By the end of the year 2020, money was overflowing to such a point it was time now to get Bank Accounts.
On 5th Feb 2021, Giddy walked into Family Bank Nakuru Branch armed with Ksh 1000 & opened an Account. The account remained dull for 3 weeks until 22 Feb when it started receiving 90 deposits per day of money ranging from Ksh 22k-100K from different MPESA numbers.
These many transactions to one account caused panic because they knew the bank guys would flag them. To keep everything neat, they decided it was time for dons in the gang to get accounts. So on 23rd March 2021 Nelson and Edwin opened Family Bank accounts. These accounts only received deposits for withdrawals from the heist.
Sometime in April, Isaac Kipkemoi joined them and opened an account at Family Bank on 5th May. On 26th May, his account received 244 deposits of Ksh 1K- 87K. Which was then transferred in bits of 200K to different numbers and withdrawn.
On 7th July 2021, Giddy opened Co-op Bank acc with Ksh 7500 and 3 weeks later he deposited Ksh 1,424,260 via his phone and 9 other different numbers. Money that was ushering them into their new status as it was withdrawn on 4th August to add on his cash to pay for his new ride.
A subaru Forester KDD which he used to travel to Mombasa with Isaac Kipkemoi on 5th Aug, a day after Isaac had received Ksh 1.36M in his account.
The purpose of this trip was to buy Isaac's new car, a Toyota Mark X which he got from Bhinder Corporation Ltd.
Next in line to buy a Subaru Forester was Nelson Kamau.
He bought his KDG 972S on 24th Jan from Muzeef Motors after receiving Ksh 1.878M in his account on 20th Jan.
Two days later Jones bought his Subaru KDG from AutoZone Motors after receiving Ksh 1.3M
The last duo to buy was Edwin Kipkorir who walked into Al Siddique Motors a month later on 24 Feb and also got himself a Subaru Forester. KDG 061R
He was followed by Gideon who bought a probox and boom the guys were now full blown millionaires.
However, pale FULIZA HQs guys were wondering why these lines with loans were being switched off before making any single call.
They reported to the police but it was already too late because the gang was about to hit more millions in part 2......
