Technology has influenced rise in crime rate — CID boss

THE Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, DCOP Frank Adu-Poku, has said the trend in criminal activities in the country could be partly attributed to the technological change the country is experiencing.
He said though the crime rate in Ghana as compared to other Africa countries was low, the CID and for that matter the police administration would continue to fight crime so as to reduce it to its barest minimum.
Briefing journalists on the state of crime in the country and emerging criminal activities in the country, the CID boss said it had come to the notice of the CID that some unscrupulous persons had launched a fraudulent website called ‘www.ghanapoliceservice.com’ in the name of the Ghana Police Service and duping unsuspecting people.
He appealed to the public to be mindful that the Ghana Police Service had only one legitimate website, ‘www.ghanapolice.com, which was not in any way connected to the said fraudulent website, and cautioned the general public that there were a lot of false companies floating in the system especially on the Internet.
DCOP Adu-Poku said commercial crime, a technology-related crime that the police was fervently combating, was mostly committed under false pretence unlike other criminal activities like stealing and robbery.
“Commercial crime include documentation and visa fraud, internet and cyber fraud, identity fraud, fraudulent breach of trust, possession of fake currency notes, issues of false cheques and use of ATM and visa master cards to withdraw money from other people’s account, he noted.
He said the seriousness of these crimes had the potential of warding off foreign investors who were interested in doing business in the country and pointed out instances where many potential investors had fallen victims of these fraudsters.
Mr Adu-Poku stated that there was a syndicate that used insiders in big companies to steal blank cheques from those companies and photocopy signatures of the various signatories to such cheques for dubious activities.
“These syndicates then give the specimen signatures to professional signature forgers and these experts carefully sign the signature on the various cheques and huge sums of money are written on the cheques.”
He said during the months of May and June 2008, one suspect, Stanley Atuahene Yeboah Addai, alias Osofo, and Nathaniel Akroful, together with seven other accomplices at large, organised and managed to steal a duplicate cheque of the Tamale Regional Health Service Directorate and a Barclays Bank duplicate cheque.
DCOP Adu-Poku hinted that another criminal activity that had been on the ascendancy in the country in recent times was fraudulent land deals, which had prompted the police to create the Property Fraud Unit at the CID Headquarters to handle land disputes and other property-related crimes.
He said the Unit had since its inception about two years ago handled a number of cases bordering on offences including fraudulent land transactions, forgery, altering of documents, trespass and causing unlawful damage to property.
The CID boss revealed that another emerging crime, “Vehicle Theft”, a highly sophisticated criminal activity that was seriously affecting the West African sub-region and for that matter the world at large, was also on the ascendancy.
He stated that in a bid to fight this menace in West Africa, the Interpol Sub-Region Bureau in Abidjan in conjunction with Interpol General Secretariat (IPSG), Lyon France, the Interpol National Sub Bureau of the Ghana Police Service, the Customs Excise and Preventive Service, DVLA and the Attorney General’s Department mounted an operation code-named ‘SETMA’.
He stated that the Interpol Secretariat had developed the Automated Search Facility-Stolen Vehicle (ASF-SV) database to support the police in member countries in the fight against international vehicle theft and trafficking, hinting that it was this same software that had been so effectively put into practice in executing operation SETMA.
Another criminal activity he noted was fraudulent gold transactions where criminals lured gold dealers into the country under the pretext of selling them gold and ended up duping the businessmen.
DCOP Adu-Poku said in view of these emerging criminal activities, the Police Service had doubled its efforts and devised new strategies to fight crime in the society.