The Cybercrime Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service has arrested the Information Communication Technology (ICT) staff of a financial institution (name withheld) for allegedly stealing an amount of GH¢69,316.09.

Godfrey Yakuba, according to information, resigned after allegedly hacking into the database of the bank and purportedly stealing the money, but continued with his dubious activities until his arrest.

He is said to have edited his personal account with the bank and that of his friend’s identified as Reginald Ashong, to reflect an increase in his deposited account and later used other means to successfully withdraw the money from the account without the knowledge of the bank.

Bank officials detected the anomaly and reported the matter to the cyber crime unit, leading to the arrest of Godfrey Yakuba and his friend Reginald Ashong in Accra.

The director in-charge of the Cyber Crime Unit, Chief Superintendent Gustav Herbert Yankson, confirmed to DAILY GUIDE that Yakuba kept an amount of GH¢45,999.34 in his account while an amount of GH¢23,316.75 was kept in Reginald Ashong’s account.

He said Godfrey Yakuba was employed on November 3, 2014 by the financial institution as an Application Support Officer but he voluntarily resigned on December 27, 2016.

On July 12, 2017, the head of Operations of the institution detected an unusual account balance updates in Yakuba’s account with the company and began monitoring the activities of the suspect in respect of his account.

The case was reported to the Cybercrime Unit for further investigations.

In the course of the investigations, it was discovered that between November 2014 and July 2017, Yakuba wrote a script to update the bank’s database, after which he edited his personal account and that of his friend’s to reflect false balances.

After successfully updating the accounts, Yakuba and his friend managed to withdraw the money from the accounts through counter-cheque and mobile wallet transfers.

According to Chief Superintendent Yankson, further investigations revealed that the two suspects stole an estimated amount of GH¢69,316.09 from the financial institution

During interrogations, Godfrey Yakuba admitted the offence whiles his alleged accomplice, Reginald Ashong, denied his involvement in the crime.