Ho, Sept 16, GNA - The police in Ho has, within the past three weeks, foiled two attempts by fraudsters to dupe their targets of thousands of Ghana cedis. Mr Benard Dery, Volta Regional Police Commander, said the police in the two cases went undercover to support agents to bust the fraudsters. He said Kwesi Tematey, 30, of Accra is in custody helping in investigations in the first case but the key suspect in the second case sneaked out of the police web.

Mr Dery said in the first case a police undercover agent invited a caller who claimed he had pilfered a million dollars from his rich Lebanese employer in Burkina Faso and needed some money to enable him to get the money to Ghana. He said the caller, who said he was the houseboy of the said Lebanese, asked for 5 million CFA to add to his 3 million CFA to get the dollars to Ghana to be shared.

The fraudster assured the undercover agent that he contacted him upon a recommendation by a lady called Gifty in Ghana. Mr Dery said upon persistent follow-up calls, a deal was hatched and Tematey who, in one of his calls, announced the delivery of the supposed windfall in Accra, arrived in Ho and was put up at a hotel by the agent. He said the agent showed Tematey bundles of Ghana cedis in a briefcase supposed to be the equivalent of the CFA he needed for the deal to be sealed. The agent and Tematey moved out of the hotel en-route to Accra when he was picked up by detectives.

The Commander said in the second case police trailed another caller who had tried to sell supposed aluminium dust to Togbe Ahoney Akliku, Volta Regional Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but he escaped. He said the man had told Togbe Akliku that he (Togbe) could make a profit of 20,000 Ghana cedis if he advanced 40,000 Ghana cedis to buy the aluminium dust being shipped by a company in Europe.

Mr Dery said the man escaped from the police net when he got down at the Tema/Accra Motorway supposedly to link up with his partners. In another development, the Ho Police last week arrested George Kwesi Baume Kley, 50, on suspicion of planning armed robberies in the Volta Region. Mr Dery said Kley who admitted having been jailed for armed robbery in the past was picked up by a Police-Military Patrol team upon a tip-off. He said three unregistered cars in possession of Kley are with the police.