I think my friend, my colleague, may have just been defrauded. Or jazzed, whichever word you prefer. Let me tell you what happened.

So there is this work colleague of mine. Just this past Wednesday, I was in a meeting with her when she got a call and stepped out. When she came back after some minutes, she asked me if I had any cash in my bank account or mobile money that I could lend her for something urgent. Unfortunately, I did not have any at that moment.

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Then she told me about her friend. She said he had just returned from the UK and went to clear some goods of his from the Takoradi port. On his way back, he was stopped by some policemen because, according to him, he was using a foreign license to drive in the country. Before they would let him go, you know how it is, you have to appease them. The police were demanding 3,400 cedis from him.

The guy told my colleague that the money he had on him was in pounds, and it had not been changed into cedis, so he could not pay them and needed help. I was thinking, ah, how? Because I know most people change their currency immediately when they land at the airport. So how come he is telling her this? Well.

 

She was in a rush to send the money to the man. She was restless, as if her life depended on it. That was on Wednesday. I did not hear anything more about it until the next day.

 

I woke up on Thursday morning, and she told me she had sent the money to the guy on Wednesday, but he had not been picking up her calls. The guy finally called her back around 9am and told her he had gone to lodge at a hotel, and his phones were seized because he had no money to settle the hotel bill. The money he had was in pounds.

On that same Thursday, he called her again. He said he was coming from Obuasi and his car had developed a fault, so he was stuck on the road and needed some money to move the car. He told her he had consulted a mechanic, but the car was in the middle of the road and was also short of fuel, so he needed to top up before it could be moved. The supposed car is a Range Rover. He then said the fault would cost about 2,000 cedis, plus workmanship, totalling about 2,200 cedis. She sent the money to him again.

 

Yesterday, around 2pm, the lady called me and said the guy was at the bank, trying to withdraw some money from his ABSA foreign bank account, but the bank told him he would be charged 6.8% of the amount. I told her I did not know of any bank that charges such a rate. He told her they were taking the charges in physical cash. I have worked in a bank before, and I told her no bank in the world collects charges by physical cash. Charges are deducted electronically from the account. I visited the ABSA website and checked their tariffs. I saw a 5% charge on foreign account withdrawals, not 6.8%. But by then, she had already sent him 2,040 cedis.

 

I asked her, “Do you really know this guy?” She told me yes.

 

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According to her, the guy offered to send the money to her bank after the withdrawal, but she told him to find an MTN office and deposit it into her wallet instead.

The guy has not been picking up her calls since yesterday evening. This girl, my friend, may have just been scammed. Is this fraud, or is it real? What do you think?

—Gabby

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