The Ghana Police Service has rescued 110 foreign nationals held hostage in a Qnet scam camp at Kuntunse, near Amasaman in the Ga West Municipality.
The victims, including men and women from Cameroon, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire, were reportedly trafficked under the guise of job and football recruitment offers.
Six suspects, believed to be at the centre of the transnational fraud network, are now in police custody as investigations deepen.
It was a dramatic rescue mission led by the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service.
After weeks of surveillance and coordination with the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the police swooped in on a secluded compound at Kuntunse, freeing 110 victims trapped in an elaborate Qnet scam operation.
The operation followed a tip-off from the DRC Embassy, which became suspicious after a young Congolese man sought clarification about a supposed recruitment offer from Hearts of Lions Football Club.
Investigations revealed that the “football recruitment” was a decoy, a ploy by a human trafficking syndicate to lure victims into forced labour and digital scam activities.
Police, with support from the DRC Embassy, tracked the victim’s journey from Kinshasa to Accra, arresting the first suspect upon the victim’s arrival at the Kotoka International Airport.
Further interrogations, which lasted nearly two weeks, led investigators to the syndicate’s hidden camp at Kuntunse, where scores of trafficked persons were discovered in cramped rooms under tight surveillance.
According to police, the camp was designed to blend in with the community, posing as a regular apartment block.
But inside, victims were forced to participate in online scams, denied movement, and cut off from the outside world.
Six suspects, including a woman, all claiming to be nationals of Cameroon and Burkina Faso, were arrested at the scene.
Police say screening and profiling of the victims are ongoing to confirm their identities and facilitate safe repatriation to their home countries.
Authorities say the suspects will be charged and arraigned before the court after investigations.
The police are also urging the public, especially job seekers and young people, to be cautious of offers that seem too good to be true, as traffickers increasingly use fake online recruitment and investment schemes to capture victims.
This latest operation adds to a growing list of Qnet-related trafficking busts in Ghana, highlighting the country’s deepening fight against cross-border exploitation and fraud.
By Peter Quao Adattor
