Man in police grip for defrauding businessman of GH¢83,000

The Commercial Crime Unit of the Ghana Police Service is holding a 23-year-old man for allegedly posing as a woman based in the United Kingdom (UK) and defrauding a businessman in Ghana of GH¢83,070.

The suspect, Lawrence Boafo, alias Destiny, was arrested at Assin Darmang in the Central Region based on police intelligence and the assistance of one of the telecommunication companies.

The police retrieved two Tigo SIM cards, a Vodafone SIM card, two empty MTN starter packs, a modem and an empty foreign starter pack from his room after a search.

Two persons who are suspected to have acted as his accomplices have been identified as Nana Konadu and Nana Antwi and are being hunted by the police.

Phone call

Briefing the Daily Graphic, the Director of the Cyber Crime Unit of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Chief Superintendent of Police Dr Herbert Gustave Yankson, said the complainant, whose name is being withheld by the police, claimed to have received a phone call on November 7, 2017 from an unknown caller who was using a UK phone number and introduced himself as a UK-based Ghanaian, but refused to disclose his real identity to the complainant.

After a lengthy conversation, the suspect realised that the complainant had lived in the UK for some years and had lost contact with a friend, Esther Owusu, upon his return to Ghana.

On November 8, 2017, the complainant received a call from a woman who introduced herself as Esther Owusu, his ‘missing’ friend, but unknown to the complainant, the caller was Boafo who was using a voice filter pretending to be a woman.

The caller told the complainant that she had plans of returning to Ghana on holidays in December 2017 and had sent some personal items through Global Express, but she needed the assistance of the complainant to clear the goods.

The complainant said he was given a telephone number of an agent at Global Express and a tracking code to enable him to begin the clearing process.

Before the complainant could call the said agent, he received a call from a man who introduced himself as a clearing agent and instructed the complainant to pay GH¢970 through mobile money to start the process.

A few hours after transferring the money, the complainant received another call from the said agent who told him that it had been detected that the goods sent by Esther Owusu contained an unspecified amount of foreign currencies which was against the law so he had to pay an extra GH¢36,000 through the same mobile money number as penalty, which he obliged.

Arrest

0n November 10, 2017, the complainant was told Esther Owusu had been arrested in the UK for hiding prohibited items in her cargo and an additional amount of GH¢46,100 had to be paid to the clearing agent as security penalty before she would be released; and he transferred the money to the agent through the same mobile money number.

The complainant became suspicious after calls to the phone numbers he had received calls from earlier failed to go through, and he filed a report with the police on November 11, 2017.

When Boafo was arrested, he told the police during interrogation that he got the complainant’s mobile phone contact with the help of a truecaller application on his (Boafo’s) phone.