IN SHORT: Three Facebook accounts in the name of Kenyan journalist Mashirima Kapombe are offering big money to users. But they are imposter accounts with bogus offers. Steer clear.
Three Facebook accounts, Mashirima Kapombe, Mashirima Kapombe Ctz and Mashirima Kapombe, are promising Kenyans on Facebook generous giveaways.
The accounts use the photos of Mashirima Kapombe – a prominent news anchor at Citizen TV, one of Kenya’s most watched TV stations – as their profile pictures.
They have posted what they call promotions on different Facebook groups and ask users simple questions and challenges to win thousands of Kenyan shillings.
Such promotions have been posted here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
But are the accounts and the offers to be trusted? We checked.
Common scam in Kenya
We noted that each of the accounts’ timeline has little activity. A newly created account with little to no activity on its timeline but numerous promotional posts on Facebook groups are usually scams.
We took a closer look at the posts and noted that they contain glaring grammatical errors, random capitalisation of some letters and words, misspellings and odd punctuation. This is unlikely to come from a respected journalist working on national TV.
In their posts, the accounts ask users to send a private message to claim their rewards. Africa Check has sent a message before to such accounts running similar promotions and in each instance, we were asked to pay an “unlocking” or “registration” fee to receive the money. This is usually a clear attempt to scam users.
Kapombe's legitimate Facebook account Mashirima Kapombe (Me Kenga) makes no mention of any promotions or giveaways.
The accounts are fake and their offers are a scam.
Africa Check has debunked Facebook pages and accounts using Kapombe’s name here, here and here.
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