IN SHORT: Kenyan journalist Chemutai Goin is not running promotions on Facebook, offering thousands of Kenyan shillings as prize money. This Facebook account is just using her name.
“Kwa mashabiki wetu wa Citizen tv Taja kipindi ambacho Ungependa kirudi Kati ya zora na maria Taja kimoja uomoke na Ksh.50,000,” reads one of the Facebook posts by the account Chemutai Goin Citizen.
This mix of English and Kiswahili translates to: “This is for our Citizen TV fans. Name the TV show you would like to see back on the screen between Zora and Maria and win KSh50,000.”
The account uses the name and photos of prominent Kenyan Citizen TV news reporter Chemutai Goin.
It has posted many offers on its timeline and on Facebook groups here, here, here and here.
But is the Facebook account and the offers to be trusted? We checked.
Fake Facebook account
The badly written mix of English and Kiswahili is the first sign that the offers are a scam. As Goin is an experienced journalist we would expect her social media posts to be well-written without grammatical errors.
In one post the account claims that it will award at least KSh50,000 to Facebook users for simply naming a TV programme they want to see back on their screens. This sounds too good to be true, as such a simple task wouldn't normally attract such a large reward, and this is a common feature of imposter accounts.
We also saw that the account claims in some of its posts that it can boost the borrowing limit for Kenya’s popular Fuliza overdraft service.
The overdraft service is run by Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecoms company, and allows M-Pesa mobile money users to complete a transaction even if they don’t have enough funds in their accounts.
But the company has advised its customers that the only way to get higher loan limits is to keep transacting on the M-Pesa app and repay all loans on time.
Goin has told Africa Check that her official Facebook account is Jane Chemutai G and that all the others in her name are fake.
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