A man accused of stealing Ksh.400k tells the court that he thought he had won a lottery.

A man testified in court that he believed he had won the lottery when he was accused of stealing more than Ksh.400,000 from Cooperative Bank.

Jared Atembo explained to Chief Magistrate Mutemi that he thought the money from the bank came from nearby bookmakers when he first received it.

Detectives claim that a Kenyan man named Henry Thuita, who was employed in the US, noticed that there are not enough funds in his Cooperative Bank account when he returned home.

The monies had been taken out using a mobile phone number connected to the account he linked in 2019, it was discovered after he reported the matter to the bank.

Investigations revealed that the number stopped working when he moved to the US in pursuit of greener pastures.

Safaricom then recycled the number due to inactivity, and Jared Atambo, the suspect, received it as a result.

Investigators claim that Atambo subsequently used the bank’s USSD code to fraudulently access the aforementioned account.

The charging sheet states that the accused “further claims that he thought he was transacting in his own account,” which is untrue because the accused “had never run any account with Co-operative Bank and only had a Co-operative wallet.”

The accused entered a not-guilty plea.