Telecom Fraudsters Busted

Mike Andrew Hanyward (L) and Innocent Kojo Amenz (R)

A 64-year-old British national, Mike Andrew Hanyward, and a Ghanaian, Innocent Kojo Amenz, 28, who are believed to be among an international gang of fraudsters involved in the telecommunication business, have been busted by the police.

This is the fourth arrest of such kind in the country in about 12 months as a result of the vigilance of the authorities to clamp down on the activities of such operators in the country.

The illegal operations of the two, who use SIM boxes to terminate international calls to the country, has denied the state and the telecommunications companies of more than GH¢9.2 million in less than six months.

Among the items seized from the suspects were two hyper media SIM Box equipment each with 160 SIM card slots, a large quantity of SIM cards belonging to the various networks, including Vodafone, Airtel, MTN and tiGO, and a standby generator.

Briefing a cross-section of journalists at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) headquarters in Accra, the Director-General of CID, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP), Mr Propser K. Agblor, said the two were picked up at their hideout at Sakumono in Accra in a joint operation by the Anti-Fraud Task Force of the National Communications Authority (NCA) with the active participation of Vodafone.

SIM box is a programme to create simulations for companies. It has three different distributions: SIM box toolkit, SIM box server, and SIM box runtime. SIM box toolkit is used for development, SIM box server is used for management, and SIM box runtime is used for testing and making briefings.

SIM box fraud is a set-up in which some fraudsters connived with cohorts abroad to route international calls through a system called voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) and terminate those calls through local phone numbers in Ghana to make it appear as if the calls are local calls. Telecom operators and the state consequently lose revenue on those calls.

Mr Agblor said the task force had been on the lookout for such persons for a number of years and noted that information sourced from many quarters was beginning to give up such fraudsters in the system.

He asked the general public to continue to release information on such suspected persons to enable the police to apprehend them.

The Minister of Communications, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, said apart from the huge revenue loss to the state and the telecom operators, the SIM box fraud affected the quality of service on the networks whose SIM cards were used.

He said it was not for nothing that the government decided to monitor inbound international calls to ensure that revenue due the state was raised accordingly.

Mr Iddirsu said there would be a law that would officially compel all telecom operators in the country to have a database of all their subscribers.

The Director of Corporate Integrity and Risk at Vodafone, Mr Ashley Ratcliff, said it had been the resolve of the company to lead the way in clamping down on the perpetrators of such crimes because of the significant impact such acts had on the revenue to be generated by the state and the company.