Inside the Dangerous World of Kenya’s Land Fraudsters

Paul Kariuki was driving on Forest Road in Nairobi on the night of March 4, 2015, when gunmen, who were trailing the 42-year-old man, rained bullets into his Mercedes Benz.

Kariuki who had earlier been charged with conning a land buyer out of nearly Sh100 million had slowed down at a bump when the snipers shot him at close range.

He suffered life-threatening gunshot wounds and was rushed to the Aga Khan Hospital where he was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit, but later died of his injuries.

His woman passenger escaped unhurt.

Security forces said Kariuki’s attackers were on a mission to kill the land dealer because nothing was stolen from him or his woman passenger during the 11 pm incident.

The deceased, out on a Sh10 million bond, was scheduled to appear in court later this month for a hearing on charges of forging title deeds and pretending to sell a Sh100 million plot in Nairobi that he did not own.

His gruesome murder sent shock waves in the city’s land brokerage circles, while further exposing the dark underbelly of the glitzy marketplace that has been hijacked by fraudsters.

John Maina, a recently retired land broker, told CK that the market is full of dangerous sharks that are always ready to eliminate any individual who attempts to separate them with money.

“This is a dangerous job. Make one little mistake and you’re dead,” he said.

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According to Maina, land fraud in Kenya is committed by a cartel that has a membership of government officials, land surveyors, brokers, and lawyers who ‘legalise’ cases of outright fraud in land dealings.

“They collude with land officials to illegally sell other people’s land,” he said, adding that the crooks manipulate elderly landowners to surrender their title deeds after which ownership is transferred illegally.

Other fraudsters collude with government officials who issue succession letters to strangers without the knowledge of the affected families – leading to children losing their inheritance.  

In a scheme dubbed Mradi, rogue brokers usually identify chunks of undeveloped land – whether owned by the government or private entities and then collude with land officials and surveyors to subdivide the property and sell it off to unsuspecting buyers.

Such schemes are very common in Nairobi’s Eastlands area. Indeed, former Embakasi MP Ferdinand Waititu was once quoted as saying that land-grabbing cases in Kenya were a national disaster.

“There are groups that grab private and public land and moot a cunning way of selling them off in the name of resettling squatters,” Waititu said.

Records from the Ministry of Lands show there were more than 7,000 land fraud cases in Kenya as of 2017 – most of which are attributable to the easily manipulatable land register.

Land officials are now urging buyers to be extremely careful when buying land by avoiding rushed deals as well as properties on sale at prices below the market values.

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