The phone rings. You answer, and a shrill voice on the other end suddenly becomes a "bank official" or "telco agent", speaking broken English with the confidence of someone reading from a script they barely understand.
"Why have you not updated your menu?" they demand.
Challenge them, and the caller may unleash unprintable insults before swiftly hanging up. Follow their instructions, however, and the joke quickly turns sour. Within minutes, your money is gone, and the caller has vanished into the digital wilderness.
Many Kenyans have long believed these swindlers operate from the comfort of Kamiti Maximum Prison.
Now, a new Interpol report suggests the scam business is far more lucrative than anyone imagined.
Kenyans lost an estimated Sh490 million to SIM swap fraud last year, placing the country among Africa's biggest cybercrime hotspots.
The Interpol African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, released on Monday, says fraudsters issued more than 123,000 fraudulent SIM cards through which they siphoned almost half a billion shillings.
"In 2025, SIM swap fraud surged by 327 per cent in Kenya, with more than 123,000 fraudulent SIMs issued and an estimated $3.8 million drained from mobile wallets," the report says.
East Africa emerged as a hub of mobile money fraud and infrastructure-targeted ransomware.
"Kenya recorded more than 46,786 DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks in the first half of 2025 targeting telecoms and was included in SOCRadar's (Digital Risk Protection Platform) top phishing detections in September 2025," the report says.
At the same time, the Communications Authority of Kenya reported hundreds of millions of intrusion attempts targeting government and information and communication technology infrastructure between July and September 2025.
Last month, President William Ruto's official State House website was breached by hackers demanding a Sh41 million Bitcoin ransom.
The Interpol findings reinforce mounting concerns over the cost of cybercrime in Kenya.
In April, a GeoPoll report estimated that Kenyans lost Sh30 billion to cybercrime in just three months.
According to the study, 37 per cent of respondents lost money through a cyber-related incident.
"More than one in three respondents suffered direct financial loss from a cyber incident over the past year. Mobile money fraud and phishing are the primary vectors," the study said.
The scale of mobile money fraud in Kenya is linked to the widespread use of mobile money across the country.
For instance, the GeoPoll study noted that more than 30 million Kenyans use M-Pesa regularly, a platform that processes more than $50 billion annually.
"This ubiquity creates a vast attack surface. Mobile banking fraud cases surged by 87 per cent between 2023 and 2024, driven by SIM swap schemes, credential theft and social engineering attacks," it said.
"Between July and September 2025 alone, Kenya recorded an estimated Sh29.9 billion (approximately $230 million) in losses to cybercrime."
Interpol corroborates this finding.
It says Kenya has become one of East Africa's leading targets for cybercriminals, driven by "widespread mobile money use, rapid digitalisation and weaknesses in cybersecurity systems that criminals continue to exploit".
Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda have also been flagged, reflecting complaints by some investors who have reported "syndicate fraud" across the region.
A European investor based in Tanzania told the Star she lost a substantial amount of money to what she believes is an organised cross-border fraud syndicate operating in East Africa.
The investor, who has documented similar cases involving foreign investors and businesspeople from different countries, said she was aware of at least 18 victims targeted by the same network.
She said that despite reporting the offences to authorities, including the Eastern Africa Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities, no investigations had been carried out.
According to the report, fraudsters hijack victims' mobile phone numbers by fraudulently replacing SIM cards before gaining access to bank accounts and mobile money wallets linked to the compromised lines.
The report identifies mobile money as one of the continent's biggest cybercrime vulnerabilities.
It warns that Kenya's rapid expansion of digital financial services has also made the country increasingly attractive to organised criminal networks.
"Online scams in 2025 transitioned from isolated phishing incidents to highly organised, industrialised criminal enterprises, often operating from centralised scam centres linked to human trafficking and transnational organised crime.
"These operations leverage mobile money platforms, social media and AI to target vulnerable populations across Africa and beyond, generating billions in illicit revenue," the report adds.
Internet security NGO Shadowserver Foundation identified more than 6,000 exploitable vulnerabilities across Africa, with the highest concentrations in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.
These are the same countries with the continent's largest Internet user bases.
It also found that digital sextortion, a form of online image-based sexual abuse, surged during the period. This was attributed to AI's ability to generate highly realistic synthetic media.
"Unlike traditional scams, sextortion does not primarily seek financial gain; it seeks psychological control, leveraging shame, fear and coercion to extract ongoing payments."
About 600,000 sextortion detections were recorded across the continent in 2025. The majority originated from South Africa (30 per cent), Kenya (13 per cent), Côte d'Ivoire (11 per cent), Ethiopia (8 per cent) and Angola (4 per cent).
These campaigns were predominantly delivered through the Phorpiex botnet malware, which sent mass emails demanding cryptocurrency payments under the threat of releasing intimate content.
Kenya is also experiencing a sharp rise in attacks targeting critical digital infrastructure.
Beyond financial fraud, Kenya is identified as one of Africa's most vulnerable countries to cyber intrusions.
Drawing on data from the Shadowserver Foundation, Interpol ranks Kenya alongside South Africa and Nigeria as the three African countries with the highest concentrations of exploitable cyber vulnerabilities.
Kenya accounts for 11.9 per cent of the continent's identified vulnerabilities, many involving outdated Internet routers, unpatched virtual private networks (VPNs) and poorly configured web platforms that provide easy entry points for hackers.
The report warns that these are largely preventable weaknesses that persist because of poor cyber hygiene, inadequate investment and delayed software updates across both public and private institutions.
Interpol also raises concerns about the growing use of artificial intelligence by cybercriminals.
The report warns that criminals are increasingly deploying AI to create synthetic identities capable of bypassing traditional identity verification systems, making online fraud more sophisticated and harder to detect.
It argues that Kenya's sharp rise in SIM swap fraud exposes weaknesses in telecom-based authentication systems, while poor coordination between banks, telecommunications companies and law enforcement agencies has made it difficult to stop fraudulent transactions before funds disappear.
"The absence of real-time, inter-agency data sharing between banks, telecoms and law enforcement created a dangerous blind spot," the report says.
Despite the grim findings, Interpol notes that Kenya has taken important steps to strengthen its cyber resilience.
The report identifies Kenya as one of only four African countries, alongside Nigeria, South Africa and Mauritius, that require organisations to report cyber incidents within 72 hours.
It also cites ongoing legal reforms through the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes (Amendment) Bill 2024, which seeks to strengthen penalties for SIM swap fraud and scam calls while reinforcing Kenya's legal framework for combating cybercrime.
Kenya's growing role in regional cybersecurity cooperation is also highlighted.
According to the report, Nairobi hosted the Third African Forum on Cybercrime and Electronic Evidence in 2025, bringing together more than 300 experts from 31 countries to strengthen digital forensics and cross-border investigations into increasingly sophisticated criminal networks.
INSTANT ANALYSIS
Kenya has emerged as one of Africa's leading cybercrime hotspots. According to Interpol, criminals stole an estimated Sh490 million through SIM swap fraud in 2025 after issuing more than 123,000 fraudulent SIM cards to access victims' mobile money and bank accounts. The report also links Kenya to more than 46,000 cyberattacks targeting telecommunications infrastructure and hundreds of millions of attempted intrusions into government systems.
