​Smartphones are very common in Ghana. Despite the constant complains of economic hardship by its citizens, finding a smartphone that supports Facebook is an easy task. However, there are young men (and sometimes women) spending a huge percentage of their 24 hours in internet cafés. They basically live there, day and night.

Conversations around spending so much time in internet cafés have mostly been linked to being on Facebook and ‘chatting’. Deep down the situation, it is the entry-level point of online scamming, a scheme popularly known in Ghana as Sakawa.

​One has to know their way around to find what they are looking for when it comes to Sakawa. It is a situation glaring at the nation in all corners but also hidden in its own way.

There are a lot of Facebook pages helping this business of online scamming boom.

Scammers have a lot of groups on Facebook where they trade skills and fake identities. There are Facebook profiles, pictures, the story to tell (something they call formats) and photo editing services all for sale in these secret groups.

Bank accounts are also traded when it comes to dealing with the money they get from scamming.

“Sometimes we come to check our Facebook and a lot of times something else,” a young man in a Ghanaian internet café tells Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop of Four Corners.

On why they have female names on their profiles, the young man refused to answer and walked away.

“Sometimes we just come here and get some money from the white men to get some food to eat. I mean some of them can give you 2000 UDS, 5000 USD, 5000 pounds and 5000 Australian dollars.”

The young man who had chats to show with men from Australia narrated how he and his victims sometimes have fun. The fun, he explains, involves sexting and showing naked parts of their bodies. In all this, he must keep his identity as a woman.

Kweku, a 27-year-old sells perfume for a living. The profit from selling perfume is in no way up to what he makes online.

“Basically, they call us ‘fraud boys’ or ‘game boys’ because we do fraud to get money. We scam.”

Kweku and his friend create fake identities to back their plans and make their bid.

Source: Pulse. com. gh

Two others - Emmanuel Kwesi Dotse and Samuel Kofi Grant Kontoh - pur­ported accomplices of the suspects, are at large and are being hunted by the police.

The four, according to police reports, after collect­ing the said money pre­sented to the victim 13 pieces of some coated metallic bars concealed in a box as the gold and bolted.

They were apprehend­ed when they resurfaced and used a different tele­phone number to attempt to defraud the victim again.

Briefing the media, the Accra Regional Police Commander, ACP Timothy Yoosa Bonga, said the suspects, in June this year, together with two others (currently at large), were introduced to the victim by one Dawti (based in Dubai) as small scale miners.

Dotse, Grant Kontoh together with Conry, engaged the victim in a series of conversations on phone and further con­vinced him that they had gold for sale.

The victim who was in Dubai, came to Ghana with intent to purchase fine gold.

ACP Yoosa Bonga said on arrival on June 28, 2016, the victim was met by Dotse and Grant Kontoh at the airport after which they accompanied him to meet Conry at Ataltec Invest­ment Ghana Limited - a registered company deal­ing in gold at East Legon in Accra to examine the said gold which was being sold.

After the examination was completed, the three suspects took the victim to his hotel room where an amount o£ $325,000 was paid in exchange for the gold which turned out to be plated metals.

The victim later tried reaching the suspects on their mobile phones but they were not answering and so he became suspi­cious and broke into one of the boxes to check the con­tent.

The coated metals were found in it and with disap­pointment, the victim trav­elled back to his country.

Days later, Mark Conry and Kofi Amehoun con­tacted the victim with a dif­ferent telephone number and told him that they had some gold to sell.

The complainant con­tacted the police and feigned interest based on directives.
He came to Ghana again on August 12, 2016 for the deal.

On arrival, he met Conry, Obeng Osei, Ame­houn and Aikins Ameho at his hotel.
They negotiated the price of the gold and all agreed to proceed to Atal­tec Investment Ghana Lim­ited at East Legon (the same location where the previous examination was done) to conduct another examination on the sup­posed gold, which was priced ?1.6 million ($400,000).

The four men were arrested and brought to the station for questioning.
Another box which was used in defrauding the complainant and two yel­lowish metallic substances which Richard Obeng Osei claimed to be genuine gold, were retrieved.

When data on their mobile phones were exam­ined in their presence, police discovered that they contained pictures they had sent to the com­plainant and other unsus­pecting victims, some of whom they had succeeded in duping.
Investigations are still ongoing.

She says her friend put them there without her knowledge. She sent me a copy of her passport to try to prove she was genuine but I am still suspicious. Is there any way to check the validity of this passport and her identity? 
Hope you can help.

Regards, A. W.

Appiah and his co-conspirators often pitched “false stories and promises to convince the victims to send them money,” according to a statement from the office of Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, which has prosecuted a series of similar cases. 

Four victims testified at trial, including a recently divorced high school guidance counselor. 

She paid Appiah $160,000, prosecutors said, for what he told her were emergency travel and health situations. Appiah had told the woman he was in love with her and would help raise her children, prosecutors said. 

Appiah created 10 bank accounts to receive the funds, authorities said, and in some cases used the money to make purchases that he then shipped to others outside the United States. 

In one instance, prosecutors said, Appiah used the name and other identity information of a victim as he deposited the victim’s cashier’s check into his own bank account. 

The scheme Appiah ran lasted from December 2013 to June 2015. Appiah’s attorney, Michael Rothman, declined to comment Thursday because his client faces sentencing in August. Appiah was taken into custody after the verdict on Wednesday and faces up to 20 years in prison on some of the charges.
Source: Citi FM Ghana

The accused persons, Mark Adigun Latif alias Nana Adjei and Toefeek Ajisafe Oluwashola alias Benjamin Osei, were put in an Accra Circuit Court, presided over by Afi Agbaney Kudamor and charged with conspiracy to commit crime. They pleaded not guilty.

They have been granted bail in the sum of GHC30,000 with two sureties while the case has been adjourned to January 27, 2016.

The facts of the case as presented by the prosecutor, ASP AA Yirenkyi, are that the complainant is Walfraus Wiscentan, an engineer by profession, while the accused persons are Nigerians who have assumed Ghanaian names.

He said in August 2011, the engineer met a man on the internet by name Chris Walters, who is currently at large, and the said Walters claimed he was from Nottingham and was into gold business in Ghana.

According to ASP Yirenkyi, Walfraus Wiscentan arrived in Ghana at the invitation of the accused persons and was picked by an unknown person to GS Plaza; and that two hours later another Nigerian – at large – called lawyer Evans Agyemang, went to the hotel and purported to complete some processes for the sale of gold and then informed her that the suspect (Walters) had been arrested in a gold deal.

The prosecutor told the court that the said Agyemang had told the complainant that they needed £375,000 to get him (Walters) out of court and to give a portion of the money to the Minerals Commission.

ASP Yirenkyi indicated that the following day Agyemang went to the lady engineer with a document which he claimed was an agreement and then took Walfraus Wiscentan to the office of Latif and said he (Latif) was a gold dealer.
.

The police officer said Latif took out some supposed gold from a box and claimed it was worth the £375,000 they were asking for and promised to give it to her if she paid for it.

The police officer said on the third day Oluwashola went to the lady and posed as a lawyer who had been assigned by the said Walters to take care of her stay in Ghana and added that on the eighth day Oluwashola went with a certain lady who they claimed was a banker, to the complainant.

Furthermore, the prosecutor stated that the two took Madam Walfraus Wiscentan to a bank and made her use her passport to sign other documents and they made her open an account and claimed it would secure the freedom of Walters.

In addition, ASP Yirenkyi said Oluwashola took the engineer to a room and showed her $125,000 notes with serial numbers, which were jotted down and the lady was told that if Walters was released he would send her gold and some money in Germany.

The prosecutor said Oluwashola and Agyemang later sent an email to the complainant giving her account numbers at Ecobank and Guarantee Trust Bank and lured her into paying various sums of money into them.

The prosecutor stated that on September 12, 2011 the syndicate sent her a letter claiming it came from the Ministry of Transport, indicating that an amount of $25 million had been awarded to Chris Walters, who managed to convince her to pay an additional 15,000.

He said having realized she had been defrauded, the complainant made a report to the police, leading to the arrest of the two men while the others went underground.

The prosecutor said the case was still under investigation.