Seven sakawa kingpins, cyber fraudster from Nigeria have been remanded into police custody following their arrest by the Economic and Organize Crime Office, EOCO, and the Police Anti-human trafficking unit at a suburb of Ashaiman in the greater Accra area.
They were detained for their alleged online scamming activities.
The Nigerian suspects, had put up a complex system where they could engage in cyber fraud and an alleged human trafficking.
The suspects, who are all male, allegedly succeeded in bringing roughly 21 fellow Nigerians into the country and tented them at a residence in Ashaiman where these cyber-related operations were taking place prior to the defendants’ detention.
On Monday, October 3, 2022, the suspects, whose identities have been withheld who were detained to re-appear in two weeks.
A source at the Nigerian high commission, the rescued victims were at an undisclosed location while efforts are made to repatriate them.
However, it has been established that the principal architect is in Nigeria and collects money from online activities before giving stipends to his staff, who are mostly between 18 and 35 year.
Over 20 laptops used in the operations have subsequently been confiscated by security services.
The country suffered around 200 million dollars in losses as a result of cybercrime between 2016 and 2018.
The Ghana police force reports that fraud was involved in more than half of these recorded cases.
Additionally, police found that the number of cybercrimes in the nation increased from 116 in 2016 to 412 in 2017 and then to 558 in 2018.
Hacking, credit card fraud, software piracy, and online identity theft were the main types of cybercrime.
