EOCO warns online businesses against internet fraudsters
COP Maame Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Danquah, Executive Director of the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), is warning businesses to be cautious of what she described as an emerging force in online businesses.
She noted that internet fraud is soaring and people need to do a lot of background checks before venturing into online transactions.
COP Tiwaa Addo-Danquah gave the advice in Kumasi last Friday as part of her regional tour to solicit support from other government agencies to fight crime.
The former head of the CID Unit of the Ghana Police Service subsequently launched a campaign to clampdown on such miscreants and protect individual businesses.
She also indicated that EOCO is working with various security agencies, the telcos as well as the Attorney General’s office to help curb the situation while details of measures to track the perpetrators are under wraps.
She said online scammers varied their modus operandi from time to time, which called for vigilance.
At the regional police command, COP Tiwaa Addo-Danquah recommended information sharing among the state actors, especially the security organisations.
“No information should be considered trivial because it is when we piece them together that we are able to arrive at a credible conclusion,” she said.
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She commended the police force for the support so far but called for greater collaboration to fight intellectual crime.
At the AG’s office, she suggested to the regional state attorneys to get involved in the investigation of cases “from scratch” to help present a credible docket to track such miscreants.
Subsequently, she has launched a nationwide educational programme in schools and churches to drum home the campaign.
“Funny enough, most of these online businesses are not registered with the relevant bodies, including the Registrar’s Department. I will suggest that before investing with such online traders, a little bit of background check will help,” she advised.
While rolling out measures to deal with the fraudsters, she said a lot was being done to prevent them from occurring “because if we don’t prevent it from happening, especially those who are lured with huge investment returns, they will turn around to blame the government first and then mount pressure to recover their investment,” she said.
COP Tiwaa Addo-Danquah was in the company of the acting Deputy Executive Director (Intelligence and Monitoring), Mrs Aba Jacqueline Opoku, the Ashanti Regional Head of EOCO, Mr Joseph Atta, as well as the Regional Police Commander, DCOP Afful Boakye Yiadom, and the Regional Head of the AG’s office, Mr Ernest Ayeh.
