Is This Ad Claiming That DP Ruto Is Giving Out Sh20,000 for Youth Empowerment Legitimate?

By Doris Kathia

This advertisement claims that William Ruto is issuing grants worth Ksh20,000 for youth empowerment and business support to Kenyan citizens. The advertisement is doing rounds on WhatsApp groups.

Background

Similar claims alleged to offer grants to young women and youth, courtesy of Rachael Ruto, the Deputy President’s wife have previously been flagged as fake by Piga Firimbi and PesaCheck.

The fake advertisements manifest similar related behavior, as they claim to issue grants to eligible Kenyans. Interested applicants are required to click the link and fill out surveys with three steps -filling in personal information, reasons for the grant and thereafter directed to click the invite Friends/Group button so as to “share the information with 15 friends or 5 groups on Whatsapp” before obtaining the alleged grant fund. 

This goes to show that the advertisement is some sort of swindle. It is also likely to be an attempt to collect users’ personal information.

Verification

Similar links have been duplicated, claiming that DP William Ruto is giving out Ksh30,000. These come up on a  Google advanced search.

The alleged grant does not appear on the deputy president’s official social media accounts, nor is it mentioned on the United Democratic Alliance’s (UDA) website or social media.

From a WhoIs search, the domain name containing the grants advertisement is newfunding.online. This is not associated with DP Ruto and on further checking, the domain results show its association with a similar fake offer alleged to be from Nigeria’s Vice President Prof Yemi Osinbajo.

This is an engagement bait scam. In such instances, the more people that interact with the post, the greater its reach and potential phishing scam, where personal data like emails and phone numbers are harvested. There’s usually no reward for such. A feature that stands out for both of these links is their similarity, something that these and other phishing links normally have.

Verdict

Posts claiming that Deputy President William Ruto is giving out Ksh20,000 and Ksh30,000 grants for youth empowerment and business support to Kenyans are FAKE.