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Sunday 8 February 2015

GREDA Boss Arrested Over $33m Sim Box Fraud

A former boss of Ghana Real Estates Developers Association (GREDA), Dr Alexander Tweneboah, and nine others have been arrested by an Anti-Telecommunication Fraud taskforce in collaboration with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service with support from SUBAH Info Solutions Ghana Limited.

The other nine suspects are Ebenezer Boateng, Victor Owusu, Kwadwo Asare, Emmanuel Kofi Essilfie, Edmond Essilfie, Kwaku Appiah, Alvin Habib, Francis Abbey and David Ayitsi. Dr Tweneboah was arrested alongside others in his house at Baatsona in Accra. The suspects were said to have caused financial loss to the state to the tune of over $33 million. The suspects, including two foreign nationals, were arrested for allegedly engaging in illegal SIM box operations in various locations in Accra, Tema, Koforidua and Kumasi in the Greater Accra, Eastern and the Ashanti Regions respectively. The arrests were made possible through the Joint Anti-Telecom Fraud Task force made up of detectives from the CID Headquarters, officials from the National Communications Authority (NCA), the various telecom service providers in Ghana, and with technical support from SUBAH. Subah deployed its sophisticated gadgets to locate the suspects from their hideouts where they were caught red handed.

The operations started on December 26, 2014 before Subah Infosolutions brought its sophisticated equipment on Thursday, January 8, 2015 to complement existing devices.

Items retrieved from the suspects included thousands of different SIM cards, SIM box equipment, heavy duty batteries, SIM Servers, 4G Modems, printers, laptops and assorted scratched cards. COP Agblor, while describing the arrest as one of the biggest and most successful operations embarked upon by the taskforce as far as SIM box fraud was concerned, said, 'All the suspects arrested so far in connection with the illegal SIM box activities have been arraigned before court and remanded into police custody pending further investigation.'

He said the taskforce was determined to pursue SIM Box fraudsters and other criminals operating in the country, and called on the general public to co-operate with the police by reporting activities of anyone engaged in such a criminal act within their communities. He said the participation of Subah in the all-important exercise was by virtue of the fact that they had a contract with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to monitor both local and foreign inbound calls for the purposes of checking leakages in national revenue. The Managing Director of Subah Infosolutions, Birenda Sasmal, disclosed that 'assisting regulatory and security agencies to effect the arrest of these fraudsters is one of the many ways Subah is helping reduce revenue loss to the Government and people of Ghana. Subah remains committed to facilitating effective telecom resource mobilisation for national development.'

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