Bar attendant remanded for attempted fraud

A 38-year-old bar attendant, Gordon Oguah, was on Monday remanded into police custody by a Cape Coast Circuit Court for allegedly attempting to steal 12, 817.62 Ghana cedis.

He pleaded guilty and will reappear March 27.

Police Chief Inspector Charles Anku told the court presided by Mrs. Florence Kai Otu that in December 2012 Mr. Charles Ansah, an auditor at the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa District Assembly, was on his routine duty of auditing and checking of workers’ salary-slips.

He said the officer detected that 12,817.62 Ghana cedis had been credited to account number 306101001692 belonging to a teacher by name Mr. Alfred Kofi Tawiah who is a customer of Breman-Asikuma branch of the Ghana Commercial Bank.

Chief Inspector Anku said Mr. Ansah became suspicious of the figure because the amount was higher than what teachers earn as monthly salary and informed the District Finance Officer (DFO) who wrote a letter to the Bank to place an embargo on the account for further enquiries to be carried out.

During investigations the teacher told Mr. Ansah that he had no idea how the money got into his account and recounted how Oguah had called him (Mr. Tawiah) on phone, saying he was an official of the Accountant Generals Department in Accra, who had worked on someone’s salary but had mistakenly paid the amount to staff number 219458’s accounts which belonged to Mr Tawiah.

Oguah was said to have put intense pressure on Mr Tawiah to withdraw the money for him as soon as possible but MrTawiah alerted the DFO who decided to lift the embargo so that Oguah could be tracked down.

Chief Inspector Anku said on January 30, Oguah called the DFO to introduce himself as a staff of Account Generals Department who had mistakenly transferred the amount into the teacher’s account.

The Police was informed and when the Oguah accompanied Mr. Tawiah to the bank to withdraw the money he was arrested and during interrogation he mentioned one Andy of the Accountant Generals Department in Accra as his accomplice.

Police investigations are ongoing to unravel the myth surrounding the deal to get other accomplices arrested. GNA