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Crime & Punishment of Thursday, 6 July 2006

Source: GNA

Three computer fraudsters arrested

Accra, July 6, GNA - Three Nigerians have been arrested for attempting to dupe a bank by using fake Western Union authorisation notes to withdraw monies.

They are Alexander Nwabueze; Joshua Alamu Thomas, 29, and Kelvin Oziri, 22.

Mr Patrick Ampewuah, Deputy Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), told the Ghana News Agency in Accra that a pen drive was found with the suspects on which letterheads of both national and international institutions used for fraudulent activities were found.

He said most of these computer criminals, who were mainly foreigners, were now into attempts to defraud banks by trying to access their computer systems.

Police said on June 20, Nwabueze went to the Western Union branch at Prudential Bank at Makola in Accra to cash 950 dollars. However, on verifying the authenticity of the note for the claim it was identified to be faked. He was, therefore, handed over to the Police.

On June 28, two of the suspects, Thomas and Oziri also came to cash 5,500 Euros through the same methods but their inability to know, who was remitting the money and where it was coming from led to suspicion, upon which it was discovered that the note they were using was faked. Information on the pen drive retrieved from the suspects revealed that they included forged documents of Bank of Ghana; Barclays Bank; ECOWAS Financial Monitoring Union; Swiss Financial Trust Bank; Federal Reserve Bank of the United States; Supreme Court certified affidavits and a United Arab Emirates passport.

The others are Ghanaian passports with the same picture but different names, pictures of gold mines and workers working in these mines.