Security agencies have apprehended Emmanuel Sakyi Afriyie, a 25-year-old contract staff member of a prominent bank, on charges of reportedly embezzling approximately GH¢1.2 million from customers’ bank accounts.

As a Processing Officer stationed at the Osu branch, Afriyie’s responsibilities included assisting customers with various tasks such as loan processing, T-bill processing, debit card processing, dormant account activation, and customer account maintenance.

Given the nature of his job description, Afriyie had access to and worked on multiple accounts.

The Head of Fraud Detection and Operations at the bank is the complainant in the case.

How the whole operation began:

The accused registered for an online coding course, which the renewable annual subscription fee was US$174.30, equivalent to GH¢2,287.69.

Instead of paying for the course out of his own pocket, the accused rather made the payment on one of the bank’s customer’s Visa card on February 6, 2023.

As a result, the complainant and the Fraud team of the bank were gathering evidence on the matter to engage the accused, but he made a swift move to tender in his resignation letter, effective May 31, 2023.

The sudden resignation and the alleged illegal transaction on the customer’s visa card by the accused person made the bank officials more suspicious to investigate him in other areas.

The complainant, together with the fraud team, made up of the bank’s IT experts, detected that on April 20, 2023 the accused by his own machination accessed one of his colleague’s User ID and password to change the contact number on another customer’s accounts.

So, on April 21, 2023 the accused personally set up an internet and mobile banking access on the same customer’s account, using his own User ID and password, after which he had access and started operating on the account without the victim customer receiving SMS alert.

Therefore, from April 21 to May 12, 2023, the accused with full access to the said account, fraudulently transferred a total of GH¢945,133.00 including charges from the accounts to a number of people.

First and foremost, he transferred GH¢90,000.00 to a girlfriend of another accused person, GH¢180,000.00 to another’s account; GH¢30,000.00 together with other transfers in tranches of GH¢30,000.00 on different dates within the said period to other accused persons accounts in different banks.

On May 9, 2023 from 7:21am to 7:32am, he used another colleague and that of the branch Manager’s Users IDs to change and authorise the contact numbers of eleven customers’ accounts, including the account of the deceased judge and the former IGP, who is also deceased and other customers and replaced them with only one contact phone number.

The prosecutor told the court that the accused used eleven minutes to complete these processes, after which he used his own User ID to set up online and mobile banking for these accounts on May 10, 2023.

On May 11, 2023 he transferred tranches of GH¢50,000.00 to other accounts and repeated that the next day.

From those transfers, the receivers stated in their respective investigation cautioned statements that the accused came to their shops to purchase Iphone 14 Pro Max and requested for their bank accounts details and forwarded the same to him to effect those transfers into their accounts.

On May 12, 2023 he was arrested by the Police in respect of the Visa Card theft and was granted Police enquiry bail to be reporting.

On May 15, 2023, the complainant on behalf of the bank petitioned the Director General of CID in respect of GH¢1,207,017.00 theft detected in furtherance to the Visa Card case.

Interestingly, when he was contacted to report himself to police, he refused to show up, meanwhile, effort to compel his surety to produce him also failed.

Arrest

On June 4, 2023, the accused together with his girlfriend, who stood as surety for him attempted to escape from the jurisdiction to Dubai, but he was arrested at the Kotoka International Airport by the Ghana Immigration Service and handed over to the police.

The investigation so far has revealed that the accused, together with his accomplices, within the period of April and May 2023, stole a total amount of GH¢1,209,304.69 from the various customers’ accounts.

The police are still investigating the matter to trace and arrest all the remaining accused persons as well as the proceeds of crime.

Credit: Graphic.com