A Ghanaian scammer is on the run after defrauding business investors from the UK out of over $1m.
Alhaji Siba Yahaya convinced his British investors that he’ll provide them with gold, and through that managed to defraud them of the large sum.
This he pulled off by numerous means of deception.
According to reports from Daily Graphic, Alhaji Yahaya met two British businessmen and their partners in 2020 and was introduced to them as a gold trader.
He and an accomplice showed them 20kg of gold bars, convincing the investors he could procure the quantities of gold they needed to purchase.
They demanded to purchase 5kg of gold and the scammer charged them $69,000 as initial part payment for the transaction.
He issued them a receipt and promised to export the gold to them via Dubai.
That was then the tricks started. He initially exported only 1kg of the gold then later started demanding more cash to solve ‘problems’ he claimed to have run into exporting the rest of the gold.
According to Graphic: “Yahaya explained that he could not export the appropriate quantity of gold because of delays in the documentation process by Customs officials at the Kotoka International Airport and promised to export the remaining quantity to the investors on December 3, 2020, but failed to do so.
He later requested for $130,000, being the outstanding payment for the four kilogrammes of gold and also took $70,000 from the investors to guarantee the export of the rest of the gold.
When he failed to honour his word, he indicated that he had been unable to export the gold, as there were no airlines to export the gold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yahaya also claimed the waybill to facilitate the export of the gold could not be accepted by the Precious Minerals Marketing Company , as the quantity was too small, so he would add six additional kilogrammes of gold to bring the total to 10 kilogrammes for easy export.
He later claimed he had been arrested by EOCO who were demanding $300,000 before releasing the gold to him.
The investors thus sent the money, bringing the total amount Yahaya had collected from them to $1,075,000.
Tha was when the issue became a police case and he was arrested and charged with conspiracy to defraud by false pretences, defrauding by false pretences and selling and buying minerals without licence.
He was granted bail but then went on the run, leading the Accra Circui Court hearing the case to now issue a bench warrant for his arrest.
Source: GhanaCelebrities.Com
This post was published on September 14, 2021 5:30 PM
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