Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Charles Domanban, the Madina Divisional Police Commander, who disclosed this in an interview with Ghana News Agency, said the suspects were arrested at Ashongman.

They are Diamond Andy 22, Benson Romeo 20, Randy Samuel 25, Kelvin Agho 23, Osas Igbo 21, David Okondu 23, Praise Onyekwena, Ohis David 25, Duru Wisdom 22, and Uyi Ighodaro.

ACP Domanban said at 1400 hours on March 21, 2018, the Kwabenya Police Patrol team, trailed a taxicab whose occupants appeared suspicious to them to Oforikrom, a suburb of Ashongman Estates.

He said the team followed the taxi to an a-four-bedroom house and on their arrival, other tenants attempted to escape, ‘but they were all quickly rounded up.’

They noted that they were Nigerians numbering 10. The team, therefore, requested for reinforcement and the Kwabenya District Commander led “Combat 9” to the scene.

The patrol team intercepted nine laptop computers, six internet modems, five mobile phones and fifty-four SIM cards which they use for their activities.

ACP Domanban said the case had been referred to the Cyber Crime Unit at the Police Headquarters for further investigation.

In another development, the Madina Police Divisional Commander said 24 suspected drug peddlers were arrested on March 15, at about 11:30hours, when the Kwabenya District Command and “Brovo Lion One” team in a joint operation, carried out a swoop at a drinking spot near the Taifa Polyclinic at Taifa Burkina.

He said a substance suspected to be Hashish in a small container was found in an abandoned kiosk nearby, but nobody claimed ownership of the substance.

The suspects have been detained at Taifa Police Station for screening.

In a similar exercise at Dome Cemetery, the team arrested four other suspects who were later conveyed to the Police CID Headquarters for further investigations.

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Source: GNA

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Patricia Meister, from Queensland, struck up an online relationship with who she though was a dashing middle-aged businessman after he sent her a friend request on Facebook in 2015.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, the woman revealed the moment she fell head over heels in love, before discovering her Italian lover named ‘Carlos’ was a Nigerian fraudster.

Ms Meister said the man seemed keen to share every aspect of his life with her when he messaged her every single day.

‘I’d never been on dating websites, and I only used Facebook for business. So when I got the friend request, I thought it couldn’t do any harm, can it?,’ she said.

‘I guess at the time, I was going through a period in my life where I felt isolated. I’d been single for a while and I’d never been on dating sites.

‘We started chatting. He was charming, smart and educated. He was very good with English and he was very romantic. I was very much in love with him at one stage.’

She said the man who claimed he was based in Brisbane had told her he was working in interior design and his heritage was Italian and Scottish.

The pair exchanged messages on a daily basis before he started calling her to have phone conversations.

‘When I first spoke to him, I heard his voice but he had a different accent to what I’d expected. I remember thinking “what is that accent?” I couldn’t place his accent.

‘I wasn’t familiar with his accent at the time, but thinking about it now, he was definitely African… He was Nigerian.’

Despite casting some doubts on him, Ms Meister continued speaking to him as the weeks passed.

Within eight weeks into their relationship, ‘Carlos’ asked her if she could lend him $600 because his credit card wouldn’t work when he was in Malaysia for a project.

‘It didn’t feel right but I thought “well, it’s not a huge amount of money to lose”. It wasn’t a huge request so I did a wire transfer to him,’ she recalled.

‘A part of me thought it was wrong so I questioned him, saying “you’re a businessman, your credit card should work…” His story didn’t add up.’

But his request for money didn’t end there. He would make up a different excuse each time he asked her for money.

‘Carlos’ was planning a trip home to Brisbane when his goods were held up in Malaysian customs. And so he needed a payment to retrieve them.

‘The first amount I sent him was $7,000. When he went to get the money, he told me he needed another $7,000,’ she recalled.

‘Everything he said was backed up by “documents” – and there was always a lawyer in the background when we spoke over the phone.

‘When he tried to pay me back, he said his bank couldn’t do the large international transfer so he arranged for a courier to deliver the cash instead.’

Ms Meister said she was given a link to a website with a ‘tracking sheet’, in which she kept a close eye on the parcel’s movement.

But when the parcel reached Kuala Lumpur airport, there was a $25,000 fee to let the cash leave the country.

‘Carlos had listed my business address on the documents so I was worried. I thought, “God, there’s a brief case full of money with my name on it”,’ she said.

‘By that time, I thought it might look suspicious if I let my money in my name sit there, I was kind of thinking “well I’ve got to pay this money to get my money back”.

She made the big payment but when the parcel got to Melbourne airport, she was hit with another fee.

‘I pretty much paid it. Money was getting hard to find. He pretty much picked up the last amount of my money,’ she said.

On the day she was scheduled to supposedly get the parcel with the money she’d been promised, she received a phone call.

‘I got a phone call from someone saying Carlos and his lawyer had been in a serious car accident so they needed money for medical expenses,’ she recalled.

‘My stomach dropped to my shoes. I knew at that point, I’d been scammed.’

She didn’t pay for their medical fees – and the pair stopped talking for about a week.

‘He then tried to request more money to cover his medical fees but at that point, I had gone through my last dollar,’ she said.

‘I couldn’t pay him anymore and I even told him I wasn’t going to send him any more money. Shortly after that, he made a “miraculous recovery” but I’d stopped talking to him by then.’

Ms Meister even tried to report the incident to police but there was nothing they could do after she was conned out of $100,000 in total.

And two months later, she received a text message from Carlos, saying: ‘This is all a terrible misunderstanding.’

Without a second thought, Ms Meister fired back: ‘You’re a scammer’.

‘After I accused him of being a scammer, he ended our conversation with: “Catch me if you can, my dear”,’ she recalled.

Ms Meister said she eventually found a support group called Romance Scams Now where women share similar tales of their ordeals.

‘I used to hear about the TV stars who were scammed and remembered thinking “how can you send money to someone like that?”,’ she recalled.

‘I think I was sort of aware but I had no idea these things could be so complex or how well developed they are. It’s a worldwide business, it’s very difficult to catch them because they’re sitting behind a computer.

‘People think you’re stupid but they’re not walking in our shoes. It’s not a matter of being stupid. Even the most intelligent, educated women are getting scammed.

‘I know I’ll never get my money back but all you can do is raise awareness. There’s a lot of lonely people out there, the dating websites are riddled with scammers.’

–

Source: Daily Mail Australia

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When Maria Grette first discovered that the 58-year-old Danish man with whom she had fallen in love was actually a 24-year-old Nigerian 419 internet scammer, the 62-year-old Swede was distraught. But, soon, her feelings changed.

“The most terrible thing was not that he had cheated me, but that he had lost his innocence,” she said.

She became consumed with what she describes as “a profound need to make a difference to the people of Nigeria”.

Ms Grette’s relationship with Johnny (not his real name) began after an evening of fun and games with her girlfriends, during which they playfully created a profile for her on an online dating website. A few years before, she had gone through a traumatic divorce, and her friends teased her about finally starting a new relationship.

But when the fun of creating her profile was over, Ms Grette, who works as an arts teacher, painter and arts therapist, didn’t give much further thought to the website.

“I received messages telling me that people had contacted me, but I never looked at them,” she said.

Then, one day, she did.

“I still don’t know why,” she said. “It was like a sudden impulse happening before I could stop it.”

That particular message was from a man who described himself as a Dane raised in South Carolina, USA; a civil engineer working on a contract in England; a widower with a son in a Manchester university.

“I was caught up by the atmosphere and by something in his words,” she said.

The pre-amble

Johnny: “I wish I could see through your eyes and see what you like to see”

Maria: “I like to see the truth, and often the truth is more beautiful and greater than people dare to realize”

Johnny: “You talk in parable´s. I can´t wait to see you”

Maria: “I cant understand how you can think so dedicated of me, when you have never met me. That scares me.”

“We spent some time writing, then he called from a UK number.”

Ms Grette, who had lived in different countries across Europe, was surprised that she could not place the man’s accent. She mentioned this to him but didn’t give it too much thought.

He told her that he was planning for his retirement; had Sweden in mind for a place to settle; owned a house in Denmark inherited from his parents; wanted to leave that to his son, Nick, who was very attached to it, while he looked for a new home for himself in Sweden.

“I wanted to meet him because I liked him,” she said. “He had a way and a sweetness I had never known in a man before. And he was innocent in a way that puzzled me.”

Ms Grette put all these qualities down to “an old fashioned upbringing and an isolated life – living in hotels and spending his free time on golf courses owing to much travelling”.

After three months of communicating, the man agreed to come over and visit her in Sweden. But before that, he and his son needed to make a quick trip to Nigeria for a job interview, he said.

Johnny called to let her know that he was at Heathrow Airport. And to say that he had landed in Nigeria. He also got her to speak with Nick. The next phone call was to tell her that he was in a Lagos hospital.

They had been mugged, his son shot in the head, and they were without money and papers.

Unfortunately, his bank did not have a branch in Africa, he added, so it would take time to transfer money from his UK account. Meanwhile, the hospital management was requesting €1000 to proceed with treatment.

The request

“Honey, I am in the hospital right now using the doctor´s laptop to send you this message so you can know my situation. Honey, if Nick dies I will also die with him, I have been crying, I wish I could call you, I wish I never came here, I will never forgive myself for bringing Nick along with me. I will call you with the doctor´s phone and send you an email later if I have the chanse.

“Honey, I am happy to hear from you and I am still at the hospital. The doctor said we where lucky we where not kidnapped. The bank does not have a location in Africa, so it will take time to get money and the management are requesting 1000 euros to proceed with treatment. Nick is all I have got and I will not forgive myself if anything happens to him. I am confused, and I do not know where to turn at the moment……”

“I will never forget how I rushed to the Western Union office, trembling while I did the transfer,” Ms Grette said.

“All I could think of was to get the two persons in Nigeria out of danger.”

The plot developed after that initial transfer. Medical complications called for more money. The doctors demanded more advance fees.

Several thousands of euro later, in what she describes as “coming to her senses”, Maria realised that something was amiss.

She stopped responding to his messages.

Three weeks after her silence, he called her and confessed. He told her that he was not who she thought he was.

“I said I already knew that. I asked him to tell me his true identity and he did.”

He was a 24-year-old Nigerian 419 scammer. He had finished university two years earlier but had no job.

He further described himself as a “devil” who had wronged “a lovely woman”.

“He said he had never met anyone like me before, that he had been fighting his feelings for me for a long time. He said his scamming mates had warned him about falling in love with a ‘client’, that he had ignored them because he trusted me and did not want to lose contact with me.”

The reveal

From this point on, their communication took a new turn. There were no further requests for cash.

“The attraction I started feeling was to the person who was revealing himself to me… It was still him, but with a new name and different age and circumstances,” she said.

Johnny sent her a photograph of himself, but Maria was not satisfied with that.

“I wanted to meet him,” she said. “I could not live with this relationship unless it was adjusted to reality in all senses.”

Unable to get him a visa to travel to Sweden, she made up her mind to go to Nigeria.

In October 2009, Ms Grette travelled to Africa for the first time in her life.

“When I saw him at the airport in Abuja, tears fell over his face, and I knew I had known him all my life.”

Ms Grette described her two weeks in Nigeria as blissful, a period during which she and Johnny succeeded in transforming their romantic feelings for each other into a good friendship.

She met his friends, many of whom were also scammers. It was while enjoying their company one night in a local bar that she began to wonder how she could make a difference.

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The fee for the 22-year-old was not disclosed.

Martins Indi was an integral part of the Netherlands’ excellent World Cup campaign, playing six games as Louis van Gaal’s side secured third place.

“It feels the right moment to leave. I have played more than 100 games for Feyenoord and now have a World Cup behind my name,” Martins Indi said.

“I always said that if I made the next move in my career it must benefit both me and the club. My departure is a good financial deal for Feyenoord, while I get a new challenge in Portugal.”

Martins Indi has been capped 22 times at international level, scoring twice.

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Source: BBC Sport

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