From investment fraud, romance scams, recruitment scams to online shopping fraud, criminals have developed various ways of using the internet to dupe people of their money all around in the world.
Between 2019 and 2022, over 60,000 reports of online fraud were made to the cybersecurity authority. Through investigations, the authority confirmed about 3,000 of these reports to be truly cases of online fraud.
According to the authority, perpetrators thrive on the weakness of their victims, which is trust.
In Ghana, hundreds are arrested for engaging in online fraud annually, most of them, young people under age 30.
Areas like Kasoa, Tafo and East Legon have been identified as a hub for such crimes with many perpetrators often being arrested in Kasoa.
Residents say though they agree the area is a crime zone, perpetrators are mostly foreigners.
In this edition of GhanaWeb Special, we speak to three young men who came to Ghana to engage in the crime but escaped when they realised it all wasn’t as rosy as they thought.
