Henritch was also charged with possession of counterfeit notes of USD$15,900.00 and two wraps of dried green plants seedlings suspected to be Indian hemp.

He pleaded not guilty to all the charges, but was remanded by the Court presided over by Mr Aboagye Tandoh to reappear on December 22.

Prosecuting Police Chief Inspector Kwabena Adu told the court that the complainant Francis, is a Businessman based in Accra, while the accused is a self-styled spiritualist, and Nigerian businessman resident in Accra.

He said in November this year, at Kuntunse, Henritch introduced himself as a spiritual father through one Kofi Ohene Kyei, who is a friend of the complainant.

He said the accused, after the introduction, told the complainant that he had foreseen a vision in which the complainant was about to get a financial breakthrough within one month and that he should withdraw all his bank savings and deposit same with him.

The prosecution said Henritch also told the complainant, he would pray over it and within two weeks the money would double after the necessary spiritual purification rites.

Mr Adu told the court that complainant became convinced and handed over an amount of USD$ 90,000.00 to the accused person to be doubled within two weeks.

He said the accused failed to honour his promise after the period and kept giving the complainant excuses.

On December 6, the complainant became alarmed and reported the case to the police, and led the police to Banoc hotel at Medie, where Henritch was arrested in his hotel room.

According to the prosecution, a search conducted in his room revealed two wrapped green plant seedlings suspected to be Indian hemp, USD$ 15,900.00 suspected to be forged, one dead chameleon, two 6 and 7 books of Moses, eight candles and one trunk which he claimed he uses for his spiritual incarnation.

–

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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The meeting forms part of measures to liaise with relevant authorities to find decent jobs for the girls who are mostly trafficked to Ghana to engage in such illegal activities.

[contextly_sidebar id=”5nKwVtBpLBKoPS4eXtZ8Cq4A5n8jqVFg”]Efforts are also underway to repatriate girls who have been trafficked to Ghana to engage in commercial sex work.

Olufemi Micheal Abikoye is outraged at the increasing number of Nigerian citizens engaging in illicit activities in some parts of Ghana.

The High Commissioner cited cyber-crime, prostitution and child trafficking, as some nefarious acts Nigerian nationals living in Ghana were engaging in.

He made the remarks at the Ceeta-Kel hotel in Kumasi as part of his tour to meet the Nigerian community in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions, as well as city authorities in both regions.

245 suspected drug peddlers, prostitutes arrested in Ashanti

Mr. Abikoye also met police in the Ashanti region after over thirty (30) female Nigerian sex workers and child-traffickers were arrested by the command in a massive swoop.

He said it was high time the Nigerian community in Ghana supported the High Commission to work at nipping such negative activities in the bud.

He indicated that, the activities of these young girls were denting the image of Nigeria.

“Let’s face the truth, let’s talk to ourselves as Nigerians. Go and see what aged 14, 15 little girls are doing here. I mean, I am a parent and it is something that bothers my heart that can make me cry. How can a 10-year old, a 12-year old girl be engaging in this type thing. I am going there. Is that the place I should be going? Is that what I should do as High Commissioner?”

He expressed concern about how teenage girls who have been trafficked from Nigeria to Ghana are engaging in commercial sex work.

Ashanti Regional Police Commander, COP Ken Yeboah, told Citi News the meeting discussed ways to send young girls trafficked from Nigeria back home.

He said some of the girls the police arrested were sent back to custody after they were screened.

COP Yeboah disclosed that police have begun investigations to identify persons behind the trafficking of the young girls.

–

By: Hafiz Tijani Citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Blessing Atia, the suspect, is said to have collected the victims’ panties, pubic and armpit hair and threatened them that if they refused to work for her they would go mad.

She demanded 4,000 Ghana cedis each from the victims saying the amount consisted of the cost she incurred in transporting them to Ghana.

Blessing, who is being held on four counts of human trafficking, has pleaded not guilty.

The court, presided over by Mrs Jane Harriet Akweley Quaye, has remanded Blessing into Police custody to reappear on September 18.

The facts, as presented by Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) C.K Abadamlora, are that two of the complainants are victims, one unemployed and the other a hairdresser. The accused person resides at Kata Hostel in Accra.

DSP Abadamlora said in June, this year, Blessing traveled to Nigeria and met two of the victims in a salon and during a conversation, Blessing promised to bring them to Ghana to be engaged as sales girls in her boutique.

According to DSP Abadamlora, Blessing also promised to pay them GH¢400.00 each monthly.

On June 15, this year, the victims arrived in Ghana and they were hosted by Blessing at the Kata Hostel for two days.

The prosecution said Blessing took the victims to Bigot, a spot near Lapaz, and forced them into prostitution and they made GH¢600.00 each for her.

On August 30, this year, Blessing informed the auntie of the two other victims that she needed them to run her boutique in Ghana.

She, therefore, paid their transportation and they joined her at Kata Hostel, where she lived.

Prosecution said the accused person collected the victims’ panties, pubic and armpit hair and threatened that if they refused to work for her they would go mad.

In addition, Blessing demanded GH¢4,000.00 as the cost she had incurred before she would allow them to go back to Nigeria.

The victims, after engaging in prostitution for some time, realized they could no longer continue with the act and demanded that they are allowed to travel back to Nigeria but Blessing refused.

On August 30, this year, two of them informed a police officer about their ordeal and Blessing was arrested at Kaneshie in Accra.

According to the prosecutor, two other victims were also rescued at the Kata Hostel.

Prosecution said the victim’s panties, pubic and armpit hair, eight pieces of condom and two personal lubricants were retrieved from Blessing.

–

Source: GNA

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One of the main challenges when it comes to preventing diseases is access to toilet facilities.

In rural communities across Ghana, the  access to improved sanitation has remained almost unchanged over the years. The level of communities’ access to improved sanitation facilities in Ghana’s rural areas remains very low – 92 percent of households lack access to improved sanitation.

Yusif Rahman visits his native Garu Timpane in the Upper East region to examine why open defecation, popularly called free range, remains prevalent in the area.

The 97.3 Citi FM Hold My Hand Documentary Series is proudly sponsored by STAR GHANA.

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Members of the committee who were drawn from all the Metropolitan and Municipal and District Assemblies(MMDAs) in the ten regions presented an over view of what is happening in sanitation and waste management in the country.

The Minister said, he requested the directorate for environmental health to convey the meeting so as to identify the problem areas in the various regions and find out how possible to solve them.

According to the Minister, the ministry had not signed any contract or entered into any agreement with any sanitation and waste management company for payment to be made; rather, MMDAs are responsible for such payment, since they collect revenues from the people.

He said the presentations made by the MMDAs would help the Ministry to come out with a lasting solution on curbing the menace and finding out how government would help in funding waste management in the country.

Mr Oppong-Ofosu tasked all district assemblies to prepare an action plan to deal with waste management under their domain.

Naa Lenason Demedeme, acting Director of Environmental Health Service Department of the Ministry said the issue of sanitation should not be a problem that Ghana cannot solve, adding that MMDAs collect money from the people or traders so they should make sanitation management their responsibility.

He lauded the presentation by the MMDAs and said this would enable the Ministry to find solution to problems that the assembly cannot solve.

“The exercise is a good one, and I hope it would be sustained, once it is sustained, Ghanaians would benefit from it”, he added.

Source: GNA

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