📰 From the news · Fake admission / seat promise
A radio show, "international partnerships" and Sh350,000 per family: the Kenyan placement company that sent nobody abroad
The Kenyan case reported by the Daily Nation did not need forged university letters. It needed a radio microphone.
According to the Nation, in May 2021 a businessman named in the report as Javan Ochieng' appeared on a local radio station with an offer: his company, Kenya Network Markets (Kenema), could place Kenyan students at universities abroad through international partnerships. At least a thousand parents responded. Some paid as much as Sh350,000 per child. The Nation estimated that about Sh180 million (the headline figure was Sh156 million) may have been collected from families.
By October 2021, the report says, the company's own staff had raised concerns: none of the paperwork was being processed, and application forms were simply abandoned after submission. No placements materialised. The reporting describes the operation as a suspected con; the individuals involved are entitled to the presumption of innocence, and readers should check the sources for the case's later course.
What is instructive is how ordinary every step looked. A broadcast interview lends credibility that a website cannot. "International partnerships" is unverifiable by design. A per-family fee in the hundreds of thousands of shillings is large enough to be serious and small enough that a thousand families will pay it. And the delay between payment and the promised outcome — a semester, a visa cycle — is long enough for a company to collect from everyone before the first complaint.
The defence is the same everywhere in the world: the university, not the intermediary, is the only party who can confirm an admission. A student who has been "placed" should be able to log into that university's own applicant portal, or receive an email from that university's own domain, within days. If the only evidence of your admission is the company that took your money, you do not have one yet.
Students in East Africa should also check the destination against their own regulator — the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council, the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council — before paying anyone, because a placement at an unrecognised school is a loss even when it is real.
Were you affected by this case, or something like it? Report it with your own evidence, or tell your story — first-person accounts are what stop the next family.
This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.