Fraudsters cash in on flood, fire tragedies

The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service has alerted the public to beware of a syndicate which has taken advantage of the flood and fire disasters in Accra to swindle unsuspecting members of the public.
According to the CID, the group is duping families who had placed advertisements in the media requesting information on their missing family members.
Head of the CID’s Fraud Unit, Chief Superintendent Mr Felix Koku Mawusi, said investigations had established that the group, including two women, used different phone numbers to call families and claimed they had knowledge regarding the whereabouts of their loved ones.
“In a particular case, we found out that six different people had used 21 different numbers to call some families who had placed adverts within an hour of the advertisement,” he said.
He said the fraudsters were also reported to be asking questions about the economic status of the families involved to be able to go ahead and defraud the wealthy ones among them.
Mr Mawusi added that it was likely that those fraudsters would extend their operations to foreign countries and nationals to lure them to pay money to them.
“We are quite sure that the syndicate might extend its operations to foreign countries and non-Ghanaians, so the public should beware,” he stated.
He advised families contacted by such individuals to report the matter to the police for further investigations to be conducted.
“If anyone has paid any amount to a person to get information on his or her missing family members, he should also report to the police and give the number by which he or she had been contacted to them,” he added.
Credit: Daily Graphic