Woman bank robber nabbed

Wilhelmina Osei Bonsu, a woman who worked as a lead generator at Barclays Bank, has been arrested by officers from the Documentation and Visa Fraud Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Headquarters for stealing.

Currently, she is cooling off in the CID cells as she had jumped a police enquiry bail since her arrest in March.

The 29-year-old woman is suspected to have stolen various sums of money from about 20 customers amounting to GH¢70,000 which were given her to be credited to their various accounts.

Her activities were exposed when some customers called at the bank to check their accounts balance and realized the suspect had not credited their accounts with the various amounts.

A source at the CID Headquarters said Wilhelmina had worked at the North Kaneshie and Abossey Okai branches of the Barclays Bank for four years until the detection of the crime when she was sacked in February this year.

She was subsequently arrested and granted police enquiry bail after interrogation in March.

However, she jumped bail. The police extricated the bail bond on the surety to produce her.

She was later traced to Sunyani in the Brong-Ahafo Region where she was re-arrested and handed over to the CID Headquarters on Monday and had since been kept in custody.

Daily Guide newspaper gathered that barring any difficulty, she would be hauled before an Accra Circuit Court, Tuesday, on fraud-related charges.

Wilhelmina, according to a police source, as a lead generator, was to look for customers for the bank or help them open accounts with the bank when necessary.

She however extended her duties to collecting money from customers under the guise of crediting their accounts but she never did.

In some instances, she managed to convince the customers, especially the semi-literate, that she jointly operated a micro-finance outlet with her husband, Philip Asare, which had higher interest rates on investments like treasury-bill.

Due to this, some customers invested with the unlicensed non-existing company and were issued faked receipts.

Her husband, Philip Asare, who is suspected to be deeply involved in the scam, is currently on the run.