Businessman Julius Mwale And Wife Cons American Citizen Of Sh222M Using US Ambassador Meg Whitman’s Name

Mathew Shaw and Brooke Shaw have been shown dust by the fake billionaire Julius Mwale. Like women love what they hear, men love what they see. Smart enough was Julius Mwale and his wife Kaila Mwale to have tricked the Shaw family with photos and videos of dignitaries and world influential leaders blinding them into den of lions. Like aviator, $1,700,000 (Approx Ksh222 million) gone.

To sell their snake oil, the Mwale’s packaged themselves as billionaires with wealth spanning generations, to fit with the caliber of the Shaws, they claimed to having a wine collection valued at approximately $250 million, a jewelry collection worth $870 million, building a battery manufacturing plant in DRC, a 5,000 bed capacity hospital with a cancer centre in a city within a village in Butere, 12 undeveloped cobalt mines in various parts of Africa, pictures with world leaders, in Forbes under 30, properties and real estates in San Jose, California and many more silicon valley stories.

Now premium tears.

Here’s the fairy tale according to New York court documents seen by Kenya Insights;

1. Mat and Brooke Shaw (collectively the “Shaws”) first met Julius and Kaila Mwale (collectively the “Mwales”) on February 18, 2022, at the home of Gordon Bowen in Holladay, Utah, where Mat and Savanna Shaw (the Shaws’ oldest daughter) performed for guests that were invited to a private dinner party.
2. The dinner included a number of wealthy, influential, and prominent attendees.
3. The Mwales also attended the February 18, 2022, dinner.
4. Presenting themselves as billionaires, the Mwales made an immediate connection with the Shaws, initially under the guise that their children could be friends.
5. Soon after making this connection, Julius began sending Mat text messages sharing recordings of supposedly private video calls and emails with prominent individuals such as Senator Mitt Romney, Meg Whitman (the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya), Ruth Porat (CFO of Google), David Beasley (president of UN World Food Program), and others.
6. Julius also shared supposedly confidential contracts with prominent companies, all in an apparent effort to bolster his credibility with the Shaws.
7. Other videos Julius sent appeared to show the Mwale children on what was represented to be one of the Mwales’ private jets.
8. Julius represented on February 18, 2022 (and many times thereafter) that he owned the jet, though the Shaws have since learned Julius does not own the jet but leases it from a company in which Julius has no ownership interest.
9. The Mwales also invited the Shaws to visit their estate in San Jose, California, which they did on several occasions.
10. Julius represented in May 2022 that he and his wife Kaila owned this estate, though the Shaws would later learn that neither Julius nor any holding company he owns has title to the property.
11. During the Shaws’ visits to the San Jose property, the Mwales showed off extravagant features of the estate, including expensive cars (that they claimed to own) worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a wine cellar they claimed held a wine collection valued at approximately $250 million.
12. The Mwales also claimed that they owned a jewelry collection worth $870 million.
13. In further overtures to strengthen ties with the Shaws, the Mwales expressed interest in being “godparents” to the Shaw children.
14. The purpose – and, ultimately, the effect – of these interactions was to suggest to the Shaws that the Mwales were persons of importance and influence, with access to power and significant means, and that associating with them would provide the Shaws with potentially lucrative opportunities.
15. The Mwales then began sharing with the Shaws their vision of “changing the world” and “solving world hunger.”
16. The Mwales also offered to include the Shaws in their plans, which they claimed would give the Shaws an opportunity to build “generational wealth.”
17. By March 2022 – and specifically on or around March 18, 2022 – the Mwales were pushing the Shaws to contribute to a series of investment opportunities run by Julius.
18. In the March 18, 2022, meeting – an in-person meeting at the San Jose estate with Julius and Kaila – the Mwales represented that the Shaws’ investments would generally be put toward building a battery manufacturing plant and surrounding infrastructure.
19. In a later in-person meeting on May 20, 2022, Julius represented that several African countries had gifted him millions of acres of land to help build energy-efficient self-sustaining cities, similar to one he claimed to have already built in his hometown in Kenya.
20. Julius further claimed at this May 20, 2022, meeting that the Shaws’ money would be spent on geological surveys in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to build infrastructure that would eventually support a battery manufacturing plant.
21. The Mwales also introduced the Shaws to “Christine Allyn,” who was supposedlyJulius’s chief of staff.
22. The Mwales claimed that local farmers in the area of these cities they were helping to develop benefitted from the rising value of the nearby land, making them millionaires (in U.S. dollars).
23. The Mwales claimed Christine was a former personal assistant for Kofi Annan, a former United Nations general secretary.
24. Julius represented that he had been gifted land that included 12 undeveloped cobalt mines in various parts of Africa, including the DRC, to develop in order to build battery manufacturing plants.The Mwales introduced the Shaws to certain individuals that were close partners in their operations, including a man named Derek William, whom the Mwales represented was a rocket scientist they had “poached” from Boeing, and who supposedly owned the company “KE International.”
25. The Mwales claimed that they had built the largest, most advanced hospital in the world, with state-of-the-art technology, five thousand beds, and an advanced cancer treatment facility.
26. The Mwales claimed that their programs included development of the surrounding area, including building a luxury golf course on donated land and building rental homes on the farmers’ properties (to be donated to the farmer for free) so they could generate rental income.
27. Julius represented that KE International was an independent, third-party construction and engineering company that he had awarded the contract to for the purpose of building these self-sustaining cities.
28. The Mwales told the Shaws that the Mwales typically relied on their own assets for investment opportunities of this kind, but that they were “allowing” a close circle of family and friends, including the Shaws, to contribute upwards of $50 million as outside investors in the project.
29. Julius told the Shaws that “the window was closing” and time was “running out” and that he wanted them to be able to participate in the investment.Julius offered to take money from the Shaws as a “loan” with a guaranteed twenty percent per annum return.
30. Nevertheless, the Mwales both assured the Shaws that the upside on their investment would not be limited to repayment on the loan but would be rolled into the investment with the potential to generate returns of ten times the initial contribution.
31. The Mwales provided further reassurance by promising that if the Shaws ever wanted the money they were investing back, the Mwales would simply return the Shaws’ contribution – even if it meant having to sell a few bottles from their wine collection.
32. The Mwales also represented to the Shaws that the funds they were contributing would be rolled into investments managed by Julius’s parent company, Tumaz and Tumaz, which they were told was worth approximately $60 billion.
33. Swayed by these promises and assurances, the Shaws agreed to invest in the Mwales’ projects.
34. The Shaws made their first monetary contributions to the Mwales on April 4, 2022.
35. By June 22, 2022, the Shaws had paid the Mwales a total of approximately $1.7 million (222million ksh)
36. The Shaws Learn the Truth

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“Loan Modification Agreement” and Partial Payments

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For full lawsuit, here

Julius Mwale’s Background

Mwale, once presented by Forbes magazine as “one of Kenya’s top entrepreneurs”, and fêted for his rags-to-riches life story in which he claims to have created a “multi-billion-dollar” company in the US.

With ambitious and well-publicised projects to build pioneering smart cities in Kenya and Senegal, he enjoys rubbing shoulders with African presidents and celebrities from the worlds of entertainment and sports.

However, investigations by several media outlets has debunked this myth, one that of a trail of claims for unpaid bills, disputes with investors and lenders, and unfinished projects.

At a very public level, Mwale can be found on social media posts photographed together with various American and African political figures, including several presidents. The latter include Donald Trump (in August 2021), Ghana’s Nana Akufo-Addo (September 2022), Sierra Leone’s Julius Maada Bio (October  2022). He hs been pictured on numerous occasions with Kenyan President William Ruto, who he accompanied on an official visit to the Republic of Congo in early July. In June, Botswana’s vice-president Slumber Tsogwane led a large delegation on a visit to the Mwale Medical and Technology City.

The Mwales in State House, Nairobi.

Meanwhile, in May 2023, several local media reported that Mwale was among a group of investors hoping to buy Forbes Global Holdings Inc. from owners Integrated Whale Media Investments, but there have been no further reports of Mwale’s involvement in the project.

The story as told by Julius Mwale is one of an Africa that wins, and an African entrepreneur who gives back to his community. At the Forbes Under 30 Summit Africa, an event held in April this year in Botswana and which presented those who the US business magazine identifies as inspiring models from the continent’s business world, Mwale was given a rapturous welcome.

Before a gathering that included senior officials from several African governments, Randall Lane, who has the title of chief content officer at Forbes, interviewed him on stage in a one-to-one conversation extolling Mwale’s business adventures. “When you have these rags to riches sagas, sometimes we have orphans,” Lane began. “Other times, maybe it’s someone [who was] poor or homeless, or they were a refugee or an immigrant. But you know, you’re, like, all of those things, which makes your rise even more impressive.”

Mwale, born in the mid-1970s in Kenya, told the audience how his first professional step in life was to join the Kenya Air Force before later emigrating to the US. He explained how he made his fortune in New York where, following the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks which highlighted financial security issues, “I invented biometric technology used to secure online [banking] transactions”. The technology, he said, was adopted by banks in the US.

His first company, SBA Technologies, was registered in New York in 2003 and, he told the gathering, it “became one of the largest biometric companies in the world”. By 2008, he said, SBA Technologies had “grown into a multi-billion-dollar company”.

Mwale was keen to present his project of a “smart city”, called Mwale Medical and Technology City (MMTC), in western Kenya, which includes a medical structure “that would be able to stop people in Africa from going to India every year for medical treatment”. This, he told Lane, was prompted by his desire to “give back to the community in Kenya” where he grew up, and to “give back to the community in Africa”.

Independent investigations reveals not only that Mwale did not create a vast fortune as he claims, but that a number of his projects were never followed through to the end. Over the past 15 years, this self-proclaimed billionaire has been regularly accused of leaving a trail of unpaid bills in his wake. Meanwhile, he continues to make waves announcing ambitious projects and associating with heads of state and celebrities to promote his smart city projects in Africa.

Rejected patent applications and unpaid rent

In a number of interviews he has given, including that with Forbes, Mwale said that upon first arriving in New York he lived in a shelter for the homeless. He has also claimed to have gained a diploma from Columbia University. Contacted, a spokesperson for the university said: “We can confirm that Julius Mwale attended Columbia University in 2004, but did not receive a degree from Columbia”.

While he has claimed that his company, SBA Technologies Inc., became a “multi-billion-dollar company” it was never listed on a stock exchange. In 2010 the company was dissolved, before it was revived two years later.

In the mid-2000s, Mwale applied for patents for his secure transaction system in several countries, including the US, Canada and India. None of these applications succeeded. Delivering its opinion on the application, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), in a document dated July 9th 2007, found that the technology employed “lacks an inventive step” and contained “obvious” modifications to existing technologies.

In 2009, Jacob’s First LLC, the owner of the building housing the headquarters of SBA Technologies, on New York’s upmarket Fifth Avenue, filed a complaint against the company, and Mwale as guarantor, for unpaid rent, amounting to close to 145,000 dollars. In 2011, Mwale was ordered to settle the unpaid rent. But four years later, the owners of the building had still not been paid and filed a fresh complaint. The sum owed by 2015, both in unpaid rent and interest charges, totalled 209,228.37 dollars.

In July 2010, Dianne Schwartz and Marilyn White, co-directors of an outpatient unit treating people with addictions, filed a complaint before the Supreme Court of the State of New York, claiming they had been deceived into investing 266,000 dollars (133,000 dollars each) in the capital of SBA Technologies. They said that they had been told their investment would increase in value more than 30-fold – at 8.8 million dollars – in the event of the company being listed on the stock exchange.

Their complaint was against SBA Technologies, Julius Mwale and a psychiatrist called Fiona Graham who they said had introduced them to Mwale. Graham had worked at their addiction treatment centre. In 2012, Mwale was ordered to refund the total sum of their investment, plus 58,000 dollars in interest.

A separate and earlier case involved New York lawyer Stanley S. Zinner, who gave Mwale a loan of more than 150,000 dollars, a deal in which Fiona Graham appears again to have been the intermediary. When the loan was not repaid, Zinner filed a legal complaint against Mwale and the latter was ordered by the Supreme Court of the State of New York to refund the lawyer. When Mwale failed to do so, Zinner took action against Graham, who is co-director of a foundation created by Mwale and his wife Kaila called the American Institute for African Development. Graham did not respond to questions sent to her, while Zinner could not be reached.

It was following his legal problems in the US that Mwale turned his attention to Kenya, in 2015, where he set up a company, Tumaz and Tumaz Enterprises Limited, for his project to build a “smart city” in Kakamega county, situated around 400 kilometres north-west of the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Two years later, the first buildings had been erected, and Mwale went about promoting the project in the Kenyan media, even comparing it to Silicon Valley.

Describing it as a metropolis, he spoke of the future construction of an airport, residential blocks and hotels, cableways, solar-powered streetlamps, and a technological site destined to produce biogas from waste material. Speaking at the Forbes Under 30 Summit Africa, he told Randall Lane that 2 billion dollars had been invested in the project and that its 35,000 inhabitants had become a new African middle class.

In reality, the Mwale Medical and Technology City contains a number of buildings situated on a surface area of about one square kilometre. Satellite images, like also promotional photos, show a small supermarket, a golf course, a tiny café, a few houses and a hospital built in concrete and glass which was supposed to have a capacity of 5,000 beds – a volume which would make it the largest in Africa and the second-largest worldwide.

A call to the hospital reception revealed that the so-called “Advanced Cancer Treatment and Diagnostic Center” is not operational, and that the establishment treats at most around one hundred people daily, in outpatient care, and mostly for malaria.

Americanisms abound at the “smart city” site: the supermarket is called Mwalmart in an apparent tongue-in-cheek reference to the US retailer, the hospital is Hamptons Hospital, and there is the Hamptons Golf Resort and Residences.

There is also a small hotel called Major Mwale Resort and Spa, which accepts no online reservations and which is promoted on social media by Tindi Mwale, the brother of Julius Mwale, who is a member of parliament for the local constituency.

There are mostly only promotional photos or videos of the Mwale Medical and Technology City in public circulation, in which individuals appearing as a doctor, client or resident are often the same. Also featured in the promotional pictures are Elisa de Panicis, a reality show star and former girlfriend of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (she did not respond to Mediapart’s request for comment), and the South African models Genevieve Morton and Candice Swanepoel.

In May 2019, Swanepoel entered into a “modelling” contract with Mwale Medical and Technology City worth 960,000 dollars. Two years later, after not being paid the amount, she and her agent, Marlon Stoltzman, launched proceedings against Mwale to settle the dispute of breach of contract through arbitration. Mwale argued, among other things, that he did not sign the contract and therefore had no contractual relationship with Swanepoel and Stoltzman. Based on those claims, the Supreme Court of the State of New York called on the model and her agent to abandon the move for arbitration. Contacted, Swanepoel’s lawyer did not offer any comment on the issue, while Mwale’s lawyer, Javier Munzala, insisted the businessman owed the model nothing.

Marlon Stoltzman, agent for both Swanepoel and Morton, is scathing of Mwale. “He’s a swindler, a fraudster, I don’t understand how he’s still in the game,” he told Mediapart. “It’s as if he’s managed to clean up the internet because when we started with him, there was nothing on him, everything looked in order.”

“He even promised Genevieve a house but she ended up working for him for a year for free,” he added. “I personally had to advance expenses: 45,000 dollars for plane tickets, equipment rental, hotels. He paid 20,000 dollars after months of phone calls and redoing invoices and using every trick in the book. He always had an excuse not to pay.”

Claims for unpaid bills totalling 2.5 million dollars

Others who complain of not being paid for their involvement in the Mwale Medical and Technology City project include Robert Okumu, a director of a company called Sifatronix which supplied ballast sand, murram and trucks for the construction of roads. “Julius Mwale said he would pay within 45 days,” he told Mediapart, speaking in July. “He owed me more than 30 million shillings [233,000 euros]. He gave me bounced cheques. It’s been six years and I still haven’t been paid.”

According to the sums cited in different legal complaints filed in Nairobi and New York over the past 15 years, Mwale and his different companies are accused of not honouring a total of about 2.5 million dollars in agreed fees.

Between 2018 and 2021, the Mwale Medical and Technology City announced on social media a number of new partnerships with investors from around the world. However, some of the better known of these, including French IT services and consultancy company Atos, French property development and management company Groupe Duval, and the Florida city of Fort Lauderdale, have denied investing in the project.

Enrolling R&B star Akon for a project in Senegal

At the Forbes Under 30 Summit Africa, Mwale spoke of a “big US company” involved in his projects, but did not name it. Four months after the creation of Tumaz and Tumaz Enterprises Limited in November 2015, a company called KE International was registered in the US state of Delaware, where requirements for transparency in business activity are notably relaxed. As an example of this, the beneficiaries of KE International are not named. While it appears to be linked to Mwale, his lawyer rejects the suggestion.

It is KE International that represents the Mwale Medical and Technology City project in the US, as was the case in the contract with Candice Swanepoel. In Kenya, Mwale’s company Tumaz and Tumaz has represented KE International in legal conflicts.

On its website, which was created in 2020, KE International claims to have “a portfolio containing more than USD $8 Billion in projects”. Just two are detailed; the Mwale Medical and Technology City and Akon City in Senegal. The latter was launched, also in 2020, amid great publicity, with the US-Senegalese R&B star Akon laying the first stone at the site. Its futuristic design, worthy of the Marvel Comics’ fictional technological empire of Wakanda, drew significant press coverage both in Senegal and around the world. KE International is presented as the builder of the project, while Mwale has occasionally been described as one of its first investors.

According to a source once close to the family of Mwale’s wife Kaila, the “KE” in KE International refers to them. The source, whose name is withheld, said one of Kaila’s brothers, Derek Knox, a former Boeing employee and member of the US National Guard, created a company called Knox Enterprises.

“The two families lived together in the same house in Florida,” said the source. “They keep everything very compartmentalized, I think in hindsight they do it on purpose.” Mwale’s brother-in-law Derek Knox signs contracts for KE International, such as that involving Swanepoel, using the name Derek William, which is also the name by which he is identified on the KE International website. But nothing on the website indicates he plays a significant role in the company.

In Kenya, another of Kaila Mwale’s brothers, Daniel Knox, is involved in the Mwale Medical and Technology City project. His name does not appear on the KE International website, nor on the social media posts published by Mwale Medical and Technology City.

According to a new official representative of the Akon City project in Senegal, and whose name is withheld, neither KE International nor Mwale were able to raise the funding that was required. “For a project like that, which will last 15 or 20 years, you need international actors who can reassure investors, companies that are listed on the stock exchange and which are worth billions of dollars,” he said.

Mwale with Akon.

The singer Akon recently featured alongside Mwale on social media posts published by the Mwale Medical and Technology City, in which KE International was presented as a consultant for Akon City. The representative for the project cited immediately above said the contacts with the company were limited to discussions about the building of a hospital. The “city”, meanwhile, has still not emerged from the earth.

The story becomes all the more confusing when considering the profiles of those associated with KE International and Derek Knox. Up until September 2021, an individual called Paul Martin was introduced in press reports as the spokesman for the Akon City project. At the time, this former member of the US Air Force was still an officer with the Florida Air National Guard. On his LinkedIn profile, he presented himself, from August 2021, as a full-time commander of one of its units. The press office of the National Guard said he was in fact active part-time.

Other directors who appear on the KE International website are all American and have similar profiles to Derek Knox and Paul Martin. Most of them were with the National Guard or worked for Boeing. According to the aforementioned source who was once close to the Knox family (that of Mwale’s wife Kaila) some of them are simply investors. “They ask to put you on the website, but most people have no responsibility within KE international, or even access to internal documents,” said the source. “They promise a high rate of return on investment after one or two years, and rather than repay, they promise more and more.”

On the advisory board of the company sit a number of former senior US military officers, including Joe N. Ballard, who in 1996 was appointed by then US president Bill Clinton as the army’s Chief of Engineers. After retiring from the military, Ballard created a company called Ravens Group which has gained contracts worth millions of dollars with the US administration. In Kenya, he is presented as an investor in the Mwale Medical and Technology City. Ballard did not respond to Mediapart’s request for comment.

Several other retired military officers, including generals, vice- and rear admirals have been, at one time or another, involved with KE International. Questioned about a possible conflict of interests, a spokesman for the Pentagon press office insisted: “The retired individuals are now private citizens.”

Recently, The Industrial development corporation of Zambia(IDC) finalized a wide ranging deal with Julius Mwale in Lusaka , Zambia.

IDC chaired by President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia signed the deal after seven months of negotiations between the consortium led by the tycoon and the government of Zambia.

The deal comes after a US firm KoBold Metals discovered large copper deposits at its Mingomba copper project in Zambia near the border with DRC . KoBold metals which is backed by billionaires including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos discovered one of the world’s biggest high-grade large copper mines early this year. It said it had raised $150 million for the exploration process in Zambia.

All we can say is that Mwale leaves no stone unturned, its just a matter of time before Zambia President realize he was coerced.