A league of fraudsters who have been using the names of prominent Ghanaians to defraud unsuspecting persons have been given a dose of their own medicine, MyNewsGh.com reports.

This was after the group tried to scam the North East Regional Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) lawyer Sulley Sambian using the name of Ghana’s Ambassador to Nigeria His Excellency Alhaji Rashid Bawah.

Under the guise of providing support to a parliamentary candidate, they were beaten to their trick by the seasoned lawyer and refused picking their phone calls thereafter.

Read the unedited text of the NPP Scribe of how it all happened

There’s a new scam strategy in town, and I caught this by revelation two days ago.

The conversation would run like this

1. They introduce themselves as senior members in government/party willing to support your parliamentary candidate.

2. They would eventually link you up with a supplier

3. The supplier would ask you to come to their location with a vehicle to collect the items or make money available for them to transport. When you part with your money, then bingo….

In my case this was what happened:

I received a called purportedly coming from Alhaji Rashid Bawa, Ghana’s high commissioner to Nigeria. After the usual conviviality he went straight to business: “I want to support your parliamentary candidate for Yunyoo with sugar, rice and oil to distribute to Muslims for the Ramadan”.

He asked me to give his number to the parliamentary candidate to call him. Unfortunately we could not get through to the candidate.

Before I went to bed that night (two days ago) a thought ran through my mind- “Don’t you think this could be some fraud?” With this, I decided to leave my parliamentary candidate and deal with it personally."

Yesterday, “Alhaji Rashid Bawa” called me. I told him I would take delivery of the items and deliver to the candidate. He agreed, then told me the supplier would be calling me."

My phone rang an hour later.

This was what ensued:

Supplier: My name is Rahman. Alhaji Rashid Bawa asked me to call you in connection with support for your yunyoo candidate

Me: Oh ok… that’s nice. So how do we go about it. Where can I locate you

Supplier: I’m in Takoradi. The goods are here.

Me: So what do I need to do?

Supplier: You either come and load them or I arrange for transport whilst you take care of the transport charges. So you decide

Me: Ok I think I will arrange the transport through my regional first vice chairman who works in Takoradi. I will give your number to him to call you.

Later in the afternoon, I called the dude with my other line. He has since not answered the calls

“Alhaji Rashid Bawa” too won’t answer my calls