Judges Undergo Training On Cybercrime

Forty-three judges and magistrates were on Friday trained on mobile money fraud in Accra to enable them to deal with the issues as they appear in the courts.

Made up of District, Circuit, High and Circuit court judges, the participants were taken through the Mobile Money Eco-System, Mobile Money (MoMo) Operations, the Criminal Justice System and MoMo Fraud, Situational Analysis of MoMo fraud, understanding the MoMo fraud typologies and modus operandi of criminals.

It was jointly organised by MTN, Judicial Training Institute and E-crime Bureau, a Cyber Security and Investigation firm.

Justice L. L. Mensah, Justice of the Appeals Court, advised the judges to be fast and effective in the prosecution of cyber fraud in order not to leave any room for perpetrators.

'I dare say that the prosecution must be commensurate with the speed with which they siphon money from their victims,' he stated.

Justice Mensah said there was the need to give priority to prosecuting those involved in mobile money fraud to assure the international community that Ghana was safe from mobile fraud.

He said resourced persons at an international study tour for Supreme and Appeals court judges from Anglophone West Africa expressed worry about how the region was noted for cybercrime and money laundering among others but had few prosecutions and convictions.

This means the international community was monitoring the judiciary and legal regime as to how it was confronting such criminal activities, he said.

Justice Mensah said the workshop was timely as it would retool participants to enable them to take the challenge of expeditiously and effectively prosecuting miscreants.

He called for a concerted effort between the National Security Centre and other stakeholders in the security space to deal firmly with mobile money fraudsters.

'Since the MoMo was introduced about a decade ago, there is no doubt it had contributed to national development in terms of revenue generation and employment. It is fast, convenient, efficient and generally safe,' he said.

It, however, came with challenges, whereby miscreants wanted to cheat the system as well as rob MTN, companies and individuals of huge sums of money instead of helping make the system better with their God-given talents, he said.

Justice Mensah said the problem with cyber fraud was serious because it widely spread, making fraudsters to re-engineer their game to beat the high security that the MTN employed to minimise fraud.

He urged MTN to be at the forefront in fighting crime by creating public awareness about the dangers posed by cyber fraudsters and help in prosecution and conviction, and said every single conviction, when publicised, would deter others.

Mr Eli Hini, the General Manager of Mobile Money Limited, MTN, said in dealing with mobile money fraud, the workshop was to create understanding among key stakeholders such as the media, police and judiciary to enable them to educate the public, enforce the law and prosecute respectively.

Mr Philip Danquah Debrah, the Business Operation Manager of E-crime Bureau, said the workshop would complement the Ministry of Information's cybercrime month awareness introduced in October.

The training would be extended to the regions, he added.