IN SHORT: This Facebook account is promising Kenyans on Facebook KSh20,000 (US$130) “free relief funds” for answering simple questions. But the account is run by an impostor and should be ignored.
The Facebook account Priince Indaah would have you believe that it is run by Kenyan musician Evance Ochieng, also known as Prince Indah.
It uses his name and photos to run promotions on Facebook. The so-called promotions are in the form of questions and tasks, some as easy as naming your favourite song.
A post on its timeline from 4 December 2023 reads: “Good morning Uko online sai na haukupata promotion yetu ya jana Taja Ngoma Moja inayokubamba Kisha ujishindie zawadi Leo.”
The mix of English and Kiswahili translates to: “Good morning. If you are online now and did not win in yesterday's promotion, name one of your favourite songs and win yourself a gift today.”
The posts have attracted hundreds of enquiries from users here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Some of these posts have been published in public Facebook groups with over 70,000 members.
But are the posts legitimate? We checked.
Another imposter account
The first red flag is the misspelling of the musician's stage name. His stage name is Prince Indah, not “Priince Indaah”.
The promotions are too good to be true and similar to many others run by fake accounts and pages.
It’s unlikely that the musician would be willing to give KSh20,000 (US$130) to so many strangers on Facebook just for mentioning their favourite songs.
We noticed that the account was reaching out to users, saying the promotions were “free relief funds” from Royal Media Services, a Kenyan media company with radio, TV and digital outlets. We searched for the promotions on the media agency’s website and came up empty.
The account asks users to contact a WhatsApp number to claim their reward. When we initiated a conversation on WhatsApp, we were asked to pay a “transaction fee” of KSh198 to another number to access the reward. This is a clear sign of a scam.
The musician's official page Prince Indah is verified and has over 950,000 followers. No such promotions have been posted on his page.
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