There was drama in court after a 30-year-old woman narrated to the court how a man of cloth from Narok county, obtained over KSh 2 million from her, saying that God had instructed him to ask her for the amount. Yvonne Kaleti said he trusted Nkuku because he was a man of God and had told her that the Lord had spoken to him to do business with her. Woman decries losing KSh 2.6 million to pastor Yvonne Kaleti, who runs a butchery, was giving her evidence-in-chief in a case where pastor Johnson Nkuku is accused of fraud. Nkuku is accused that on diverse dates between March 1, 2021, and April 30, 2023, with intent to defraud, he obtained KSh 2,666 109 from Kaleti by pretending that he was in a position to buy her cows, a fact that he knew to be false.. Kaleti told the court that she had sent huge sums of money to the pastor over two years. During cross-examination by Nkuku’s advocate, Martin Ole Kamwaro, she recounted January 16, 2023, when she sent KSh 50 through a proxy after Nkuku allegedly told her that he had Fuliza (a mobile money overdraft) that allows subscribers to send money on credit. Woman claims pastor told her God had told him to take her car “Sometimes the pastor would say he has fuliza, so he would give me other people’s phone numbers where I would send the money. Saa zingine pastor alikua anasema nimtumie credit ako na fuliza (other times he could ask me to send him phone airtime because he has an overdraft),” she testified. Kaleti added that, at some point, the pastor insisted that she transfer her vehicle to him. “The pastor said that God had spoken to him that I should give him the car which I did,” she told the court. Woman pays for cows she had not seen, regrets the move The businesswoman said she recovered the car with the help of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI). She claimed that one day after the pastor helped her claim payment for a parcel of land she had sold, he proposed that she give him the money so that he could buy cows and keep them at his place for her. According to a police statement, Kaleti said she once withdrew KSh 1 million from the Co-operative Bank in Kitengela and gave it to the pastor to buy more cows. She added that she sent Nkuku money totalling KSh 1,294,109 via mobile money transfer to his two phone numbers. The woman also claimed that she met the cleric at Nyamakima in Nairobi and gave him KSh 300,000, also to increase the number of cows. Trouble for her began when she wanted to visit Nkuku’s home to see the cattle he had bought in the hope of doing a side hustle in the butchery business. “When I tried asking him if I could see the cows, he kept saying the cows had moved to greener pasture areas. In the end, he switched off his phone. When he realised that I was coming after my money, he started to evade me. It’s when it hit me that this pastor was not straightforward. I used to believe his words because he was a man of God and thought he would never lie,” the lady said. According to court documents, the two met in 2021 when the pastor came to pray for her family and helped her claim a debt from a land buyer who had stuck with her money. The matter was before Senior Principal Magistrate Robertson Ondieki She told the police the accused refused to pick up her calls once she made the payments. In another case of alleged fraud, a former follower of Pastor Paul Mackenzie said the controversial cleric had conned about 300 families by selling them land in Shakahola Forest.
by Michael Ollinga Oruko