A collaboration between the National Lottery Authority (NLA) and the Ghana Police Service has led to the arrest of nine persons who are suspected to be behind recent social media publications aimed at defrauding the unsuspecting public by giving out supposed winning lotto numbers.
The NLA in recent time has had occasion to caution the general public to be mindful of lotto fraudsters who purport to be staff of the Authority and claim to have winning numbers.
Accused persons
The suspects as captured on the Police charge sheet are; Prince Agboglah Selorm, wise Akagbo, Hallow Winfred, Ali Gershon, Peter Sappey, Mantey Dzidzinyo, Oscar Amevor, Azilah Elijah and Samuel Kuditsa.
Charges
The accused persons have been charged with Charlatanic advertisement contrary to section 137 of the Criminal and Other Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) and Section 110 of the Electronic Transactions Act, 2008, (Act 772).
The first accused person, Prince Agboglah Selorm, who according to the Police charge sheet is a trader and 22 years of age, has been charged alone with the offence of defrauding by false pretences, contrary to section 131 (1) of the Criminal and Other Offences Act 1960 (Act 29).
In Court
The accused persons were first arranged on the 11 February 2022 and admitted to bail in the sum of GHc 300,000.00 with two sureties each.
In court today 22 March 2022, Police Prosecutor, Fredrick Sarpong, told Judge Emmanuel Essandoh’s court that the Police are conducting further investigations into the case which may lead to the changing if the charge sheet and the brief facts.
The prosecution therefore asked for an adjournment to enable them to do same. Circuit judge, Emmanuel Essandoh, obliged the Police and adjourned sitting to the 4 April 2022.
Facts
According to the brief facts of the case, the complainants are the management of National Lottery Authority.
The first accused person (A1) is a trader. A2 and A3 are unemployed. A5, A6, A7 and A8 are students, while A4 and A9 are store attendants.
During the month of January 2022, the management of National Lottery Authority(NLA) received several complaints from the general public to the effect that some individual have used the NLA’s symbols, photographs and names of NLA staff, to create various social media accounts.
By means of these accounts, they went ahead to claim that they have winning NLA lotto numbers and they are willing to give them out at a fee.
Through this strategy, they have succeeded in defrauding some members of the public of huge amounts of money.
The NLA management subsequently lodged a complaint to the Police. During investigation, Police traced and arrested the accused persons through the phone numbers they used to perpetrate the crime.
The Police searched and recovered from the accused persons’ mobile phones containing the various SIM cards used by the accused persons.
One of the victims, Comfort Yankey, mentioned A1’s phone number as, 0549491036, indicating that she has been defrauded by A1 to the tune of GHC300,000 under the pretences of giving her NLA winning lottery numbers which will make her win an amount of GHc 2,860,000.00.00
Further investigations by the Police revealed that A1 used the following numbers; 0540480667, 0247124669 and 0207683962, to receive the defrauded monies from his victim, Comfort Yankey.
Wilberforce Asare
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