One of the easiest things in the world is to mistake an outcome for a story. A beautiful home. A thriving business. A failed marriage. A child in an expensive school. A forty-year-old with no savings. Someone who seems to have it all. Someone who appears to have fallen behind. We see the destination and instinctively begin filling in the journey. Hardworking. Lazy. Disciplined. Irresponsible. Lucky. Entitled. Deserving. Wasteful. Perhaps the most dangerous thing about human beings is not that we judge one another. It is how quickly we become certain that our judgment is correct. Because every life has invisible expenses. Not just financial ones. The kind that never appear on a bank statement or a résumé. Some are chosen. Some are imposed. Some are wise. Some are costly mistakes. Most are a complicated mixture of both. One person reaches middle age with very little savings because they spent years paying school fees for younger siblings. Another because they repeatedly made poor financi...
This isn’t just a story about fake job offers in Qatar or Thailand. Or about that woman who just got arrested after conning people with promises of work abroad. It’s bigger. This is about us. The Kenyan public. The crowd that claps when a scammer makes it. The society that praises the hustle—no matter how dirty it is—because we all want to believe that wealth is within reach, if only we try hard enough. Or cheat cleverly enough. You’ve seen the headlines: “Suspected fraudster flaunted luxury lifestyle on TikTok” “Victims paid up to KES 500,000 each in fake visa fees” “Exposed: Scam kingpin now turned motivational speaker” And what’s wild? People still follow them. People still clap. Because we love a redemption story. Even if the “redemption” is just rebranding the scam. What It Takes to Be a Scammer in Kenya To scam in Kenya, you need three things: A deep understanding of desperation. A smooth tongue. And a society that rewards shortcuts. Scammers don’t create ho...