Dar es Salaam – Tanzania Police said Monday its Financial Cybercrime Unit had arrested seven suspects over alleged online theft of about Sh2 billion, including Steven Deogratius Mganga and Zhi Hang Wang, described as a Chinese national, while withholding the names of the other five suspects.
Police said the alleged offences occurred in Dar es Salaam, Dodoma and Tabora and that further legal procedures were continuing. Police did not identify victims, the accounts or platforms involved, the alleged method, any money recovered, a charge, or a court case number.
Mr Wang’s reported nationality alone also does not establish a Chinese, foreign or transnational criminal network, and police have not publicly alleged overseas accomplices, cross-border transfers or foreign law-enforcement cooperation in this inquiry.
The case comes as police-recorded cybercrime has increased, although the latest figures do not show how many cases involve completed online theft.
In its 2026–27 budget speech, the Home Affairs Ministry told Parliament that police stations recorded 1,323 cybercrime offences between July 2025 and April 2026, compared with 748 in the preceding financial year.
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The ministry attributed the higher recorded number partly to improved investigative equipment, operations, online patrols and reporting. The data shared, however, does not identify a leading perpetrator profile, nationality or fraud method.
Telecommunications regulator TCRA records a related but different measure: reports of mobile-network fraud and attempted fraud. Its most recent June 2026 sector data placed 63 per cent of those reports in Rukwa and Morogoro, with 2,495 and 2,129 incidents respectively.
Mobile-phone and mobile-money users are a central exposed group, while the Financial Intelligence Unit identifies banks, their customers, systems and commercial credentials as significant targets or risk exposures.
In its 2023 payment-systems report, the Bank of Tanzania also documented fake payment-confirmation messages and demands for fees to release purported funds as recurring scam patterns, rather than a ranked list of offences.
There is no verified current public national total for money lost to cybercrime. The Sh2 billion in the present matter is itself an estimated alleged loss, not an audited or court-proven figure.
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A 2022 High Court judgment, however, upheld the conviction of a man who used SIM-upgrade deception to steal Sh9.4 million from two mobile-banking users and ordered compensation.
Authorities are combining investigation, prosecution rules, telecom controls and public reporting. The Cybercrimes Act criminalises computer-related fraud, while the National Prosecutions Service’s 2025 procedures cover digital evidence, preservation, asset recovery and cross-border legal assistance.
TCRA says suspected fraudulent calls and messages can be reported through the joint Police-TCRA short code 15040, and subscribers can check SIM cards registered in their name through *106#.
The regulator also cites biometric registration, blocking implicated numbers, IMEIs and national identification records, alongside public education, as part of the response.
A separate payment-card investigation announced by the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau in January involved foreign nationals among people charged, but no final convictions have been publicly located in that case.
