419 NGO’s Duping Operations

A group of people who claim to be a Non Governmental Organization with affiliates in Europe, the Middle East, USA and Asia currently operating in the country continue to dupe unsuspecting Ghanaians desperate to either secure employment locally or overseas. In fact they have been able to extract thousands of dollars from these persons some of who sought loans and credits to achieve their aims and are now gnashing because they just cannot trace the miscreants.

The group operates through a website from where the job offers are displayed with addresses and all. The catch is their claim that their principal purpose is to eradicate poverty and street children in Africa and bring relief to the economically depressed.

As part of their initiatives to eradicate poverty and “set Africans from their woes,” they propose to offer free air tickets, accommodation and job to applicants who would apply. To make it more credible, they also propose to deduct 10 per cent of the monthly salary of a successful applicant as a means of soliciting funds.

Investigations by the Network Herald however revealed that the NGO, INGAN ORG, has neither registered with the Registrar General Department nor maintain a permanent or even temporal office to carry out their duties. The kingpins of INGAN operate from their cars. They take their prospective victims to a beautiful mansion adjacent the plush M-Plaza hotel at the Roman Ridge in Accra.

Enquiries at the “office revealed that the operators offered the caretaker some 23,000 dollars to allow them to use the place to dupe people but he declined. And many are the desperate Ghanaians eager to escape the current economic situation, who have seized the opportunity as a means of securing greener pastures only to be robbed of thousands of dollars.

INGAN ORG is made up of three groups operating within Accra and Kumasi. Reply is very immediate along with an appointment letter that enables the applicant to report with a passport and four recent passport photographs to their West Africa Resource Agency for immigration, visa processing and preparations for departure.

Investigations further revealed that they are like the “lotto doctor, just kind that’s all” with no place to lay their heads but lurk in hotels and use mobile phones to communicate with their accomplices on their daily activities.

Victims now troop in the droves to the Roman Ridge “rendezvous” daily lamenting the loss of thousands of dollars from the 419ers. Their claim of offering a wide variety of financial products to private projects in African countries is enticing since they promise funding for technically sound private sector enterprises with good prospects sound good. But the end thereof is criminal. For now though, the Network Herald is watching.