Telecom companies and the government are estimated to have lost over US$65.5million to SIMBox fraudsters in just seven months this year.
The loss was incurred between January and July 2015, and adds to the growing concern about participation of fraudsters in the country’s telecom space and the deprivation of taxes and lost inbound international revenue.
Earlier this month, the special taskforce set up to control and minimise the threat of fraudsters to the communication sector busted a SIMBOX syndicate as it stepped up efforts to cleanse the sector.
Of the number arrested, four are foreigners who have connived with locals to dupe the telcos and the nation of revenues.
When separate SIMBox fraud detection projects were carried out by the Communication Fraud Task Force -- made up of detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service; National Communications Authority (NCA); telcos; and Subah Info Solutions, in Kumasi, Accra and Tema, in January, March and July, 2015 -- a total amount of US$65.5million was recorded to have been lost.
Director General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of Ghana’s Police Service, Prosper Afolorh, said these at a press briefing after fresh arrests of three suspects for SIM Box fraud, including a minor, was made in Tema.
Mr. Afolorh explained that the Communication Fraud Task Force is working hard to reduce SIMBox fraud or eliminate it entirely.
“The CID is serving notice to other perpetrators of SIMBox fraud that the task force is equipped with modern gadgets to locate their hideouts, and we shall continue to pursue them until SIMBox fraud is brought to its barest minimum, if not completely eradicated,” he said.
The new suspects, who have defrauded the state of US$200,000, include Selasi Dorfenyo, 24, Nicholas Ntsu, 16, and Eric Akpanya, 30.
They were arrested on July 6 and 7 at various hideouts in Tema, where items including two SIMBoxes, 700 MTN cards, 100 Airtel top-up cards, one generator, two heavy-duty batteries, one UPS, one laptop, one mini-tablet, and 16 antennas were retrieved.
Mr. Afolorh added that a Lebanese national is on the run, while another Ghanaian -- who is an MTN distributor, an accomplice -- has been identified and efforts are being made to arrest him.
Since the taskforce started working in 2011 till date, 20 SIMBox cases have been recorded and 24 persons arrested. While some of the cases have been completed with suspects convicted, others are still being investigated by the CID and the Attorney-General’s department.
The Director General of the CID has stated that apart from charging the fraudsters with fraud they will also be charged with money laundering so that their assets, including their bank accounts, can be traced and confiscated.
The newly-appointed Director General of NCA, William Tevie, has warned that the constant surveillance activities of the task force will continue unabated and called on the general public to report any suspicious activities on their phones.
“The location-finding operations will continue unabated, and the NCA reminds citizens to look out for persons who buy volumes of SIM cards and avoid registration of SIM cards. What the NCA and Subah are doing is monitoring the system with test calls to determine where these calls are passing.
“In a way we are able to be proactive to see which SIM cards are being used for these fraudulent activities. On a daily basis, NCA and Subah do about 10,000 calls from their testing locations around the world and then they are able to know where these calls are being terminated and which local numbers are being used. Very soon, there will be a system to eliminate this completely,” he said.
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