Pastor in ¢450 million fraud

A man who claims to be an international evangelist with the Holy Ghost Cathedral in Abuja, Nigeria, is being held by the Ghana police for defrauding two persons to the tune of GH¢45,000 (¢450 million).

The man, Rev. Paul Naab Ambek, is currently in custody at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) headquarters in Accra.

He was alleged to have told one of his victims, David Nartey Addetah, that he (Ambek) had been engaged by the United Nations (UN) to recruit young Africans to be trained in the United States of America as future leaders of the continent.

He then proceeded to collect the money at various times between 2005 and 2007 for different reasons, but he ran out of luck when the trip, scheduled to have come off on July 24, 2007, failed to materialise.

Rev. Ambek was said to have vacated his residence at Adenta to evade his pursuers and after resisting arrest for sometime, he finally yielded to the police at a popular restaurant in Accra.

Although he initially denied taking the money, he later admitted in a second statement to the police that he took money from the complainant but that it was not as much as ¢450 million.

The Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Mr David Asante-Apeatu, told the Daily Graphic that the suspect approached the complainant with the purported UN training programme sometime in 2005.

Mr Asante-Apeatu said the complainant became convinced and started parting with various sums of money.

He explained that the suspect at some point sent SMS messages to the complainants purporting to be emanating from officials of the US Embassy requesting for more money to facilitate the processing of the documents.

According to Mr Asante-Apeatu, the suspect later informed the complainants that the British government had decided to be part of the training programme and was to offer £3,000 per week emolument to the recruits.

He said the suspect, therefore, requested for more funds to secure UK entry visas and work permits.

The Director-General said the suspect again sent emails to the complainants demanding additional funds to pay for the UK travel and work documents.

Source: Daily Graphic/Albert K. Salia