UK Police Cyber Unit are in Ghana to work and train the police detectives on the damage of so-called ‘romance scams’ in a bid to tackle the youths in catfishing and fraud.
The scheme is part of a bid for law enforcement agencies in the UK to share intelligence and training with their equivalents in Ghana to clamp down on scams.
Nik Adams, the commander overseeing UK police’s response to fraud, has revealed that officers are sharing data of victims’ suffering with Ghanaian police in an effort to stop Britons from being duped out of £90 million annually by romance scammers.
In an interview with Media Telegraph, Commander Nik Adams, stated that a collaborative effort will give preventative measures to tackle “schools” put up to teach kids how to discover and target rich single women online.
It’s about fostering moral bravery, he continued, so that individuals will choose not to partake in that sort of criminal action.The hard-edged law enforcement methods as well as some extremely effective prevention activities are used to combat fraud.
Through the scheme, officers in Britain have shared information with authorities in Ghana to build a better picture of the experiences of victims, which they hope can be used to deter would-be scammers from causing harm.
Adams said, that he had seen Ghanaian police deliver Prevent-style training, aimed at teaching young people about the consequences of scamming victims,
The partnership is hoped to shape future collaboration with authorities across Africa and Asia. Prevent training has been rolled out in the UK as a legal requirement for specified authorities where there are risks of radicalisation.
The training aims at stopping terrorist attacks happening and strengthening the UK’s protective against extremism through intervention.
It was part of the CONTEST counter-terrorism strategy introduced in 2003 under the Blair administration and since revised several times.
In 2020, the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) launched a campaign to tackle romance fraud through awareness raising and greater enforcement activity, after incidence shot up 26% year-on-year.
The campaign led to the identification of 38 victims of romance fraud, leading to arrests.
The start of cooperation with Ghanaian authorities led to £115,000 being repatriated with victims of such scams in the UK.
Ghanaian schoolchildren are being taught about the impact of romance scams on UK victims in a “Prevent-style” attempt to stop them becoming fraudsters, one of Britain’s top police officers has revealed.
Adams continued, The Police, the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the National Economic Crime Centre were trying to tackle at source the problem of Ghanaian children being groomed into seeing UK romance fraud victims as an “investment”.
Alternative “schools” have been set up in Ghana by criminals to teach teenagers how to “catfish”, which involves them trawling the internet for wealthy single women, then creating a convincing fake identity with the aim of gradually persuading their trusting victims that they are the man of their dreams.
The scammers parade their wealth around cities in African countries like Ghana in such a flagrant manner that they even have their own nickname, Sakawa boys, a term which means “putting inside” in the Hausa language.
Adams stated that, he met the police top hierarchy in Ghana earlier this year, said officers from the African country’s national economic crime command were masterminding counter-fraud education programmes similar to the UK’s deradicalisation Prevent schemes to prevent young people turning to terrorism.
“I went to see an amazing input in a high school out in a remote village outside of Accra, where the economic crime command of the Ghanaian police service was delivering what we would call a Prevent input to young people.”
“They were talking to them about the roots of being drawn into that type of offending, where culturally it’s seen as more acceptable. It’s a way when you live in poverty to earn money. Young kids are groomed to see victims as clients, that they’re providing a service, and investment through romance fraud.”
“We are working with the authorities over there to provide information back the other way about what our victims are experiencing so they can build that into their training products to demonstrate to young people in Ghana, the harm that’s been caused through these sorts of activities.”
“It is about trying to build the moral courage for people to choose not to engage in that type of criminal behaviour. There are multiple approaches to tackle fraud hard-edge law enforcement and some really powerful prevention work.”
The Irish Garda National Economic Crime Bureau working with the City of London Police has raised similar concerns and also made arrests.
Filed by Vince Appiah
Journalist in London
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