The Asokore-Mampong District Court, presided over Mrs Portia Molly Anafo Salia, has remanded into police custody eight people suspected to be members of a gang that has been defrauding the state of huge sums of money through the use of ghost names.
The suspects allegedly used fictitious means to enrol people onto the National Service Scheme and the National Youth Employment programmes and through their accomplices in some of the banks, managed to defraud the state of huge sums of money.
The suspects are Isaac Asirifi, 28 years, student; Isaac Antwi, 35 years, unemployed; Ismaila Osman, 26 years, general merchant; Sarkodie Addo, 19 years, student and Opoku Kyeremeh also known as Gyan Tony, 21 years, teacher.
The rest are Ernest Adabanka popularly known as Eshun Kingsley, 18 years, unemployed; Edward Owusu Ansah, 18 and Samuel Opoku also known as Felix Konadu.
They were charged with stealing, abetment and forgery.
Their plea was reserved as the police had not finished with its investigations.
Due to the grand nature of the alleged scheme, the police are yet to compute the amount the state has lost.
They are to reappear on April 11, 2017.
Facts
According to Sergeant Samuel Mensah, who presented the case to the court, officers of the Manhyia Divisional Police Command picked up intelligence that a group of people were unlawfully generating ghost names and had infiltrated the National Service Scheme system and were using the names to withdraw money from the state coffers.
He said on April 2, 2017, a team was dispatched to an office known as H&A Consult at Asawase where Isaac Antwi and Samuel Opoku were arrested in the process of recruiting people onto the National Service Scheme.
A search conducted at the office revealed numerous letters seeking enrolment onto the scheme and passport pictures; official stamp of the assistant director of the Ghana Health Service, Asokore-Mampong Municipal, postings, national service letterheads and application forms with pictures embossed on them.
Other items retrieved included Ecobank receipts, computers, 10 e-Zwich cards and machines from Ecobank and an affidavit from a Kumasi High Court.
Sgt Mensah said the police later arrested Isaac Asirifi from whom they retrieved nine e-Zwich cards of various banks.
He said police investigations revealed that the suspects have accomplices at Ecobank and the Bank of Ghana who have been helping them.
He said the suspects have through the unlawful acts succeeded in withdrawing huge sums of money from the accounts of the National Service Scheme and the National Youth Employment Programme.
“The exact figure is yet to be computed as there are other suspects in other regions who are yet to be arrested,” he stated.
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