Two persons alleged to be scammers who preyed on persons desperate to be recruited into the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) have been arrested.
46-year-old Awuah Forson, and his 71-year-old accomplice, Ekow Hackman, were nabbed by the Tema Region GIS when they tried to defraud their latest victim.
However, after the victim had paid money to Awuah Forson and realized that he was not an Immigration Officer, she reached out to the Service for help.
A team of undercover Immigration Officers was then assembled to bait Awuah and then apprehend him. His accomplice would later be arrested.
Before their arrest, the duo are said to have defrauded over 30 people to the tune of over Ghc250,000.
The victim who instigated the arrest is said to have reached out to the Public Relations Officer for Immigration Academy and Training School, ASI Roland Aziz, who decided to follow up on the case.
ASI Aziz then asked her to propose a meeting with the scammer so that four other officers detailed for the task would be able to catch them in the act.
“At the hotel, I told him I had a brother who also wanted to join the Service. Then he told me to send my brother’s money to him, but the Immigration officer who was pretending to be my brother said if he hasn’t seen him [Mr. Forson] there was no way he was sending the money to him. So the next day, when Mr. Forson came for the money, he was grabbed by the officers,” she recounted.
The Head of Operations in Tema, James Hayford Boadi warned the public to be wary of such rackets. “I’m telling the general public, the Immigration Service does not sublet its recruitment exercise to either individual or group of persons. No. Every recruitment exercise is done by GIS and GIS alone under the Ministry of Interior. So we don’t sublet our recruitment process to civilians or men in uniform,” he said.
“My advice to the general public is that if you want your ward to be recruited into the Ghana Immigration Service, make sure you go through the right processes. Don’t pay money to any unscrupulous scammer.”