Posted: Daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Monday, 13 September 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Marian Little, the retired British businesswoman who fell prey to internet fraud popularly known as ‘sakawa, through her supposed lover, is putting up a strong legal team to sue one of the leading banks in the country, Standard Chartered Bank (Stanchart), for their alleged involvement in the scam that led to her losing her life-long savings of $100,000.
In an almost two hour-long interview with DAILY GUIDE last Thursday, Marian narrated what could easily pass for a Hollywood movie since the scam was so sophisticated to an extent that even the fraud department of the famous Lois Bank in the United Kingdom, which conducted extensive initial investigations into it before she transferred the $100,000 to her supposed lover’s account in Ghana, could not detect anything.
Marian claims to have sighted the account dossier of her victim, the 25-year-old boy, who used the name of Frederick Stark to dupe her in what was supposed to be a love affair, and realized that the bank broke all protocols in the banking since it failed to do due diligence in the discharge of its duties.
So far, five people including the 25-year-old principal suspect who used the name Frederick Stark, his supposed 22-year-old daughter, Agnes Anang and a staff of the Tudu branch of Standard Chartered Bank have been arrested and are facing trial in at a High Court.
According to her, the money hit the account on Monday, September 14, 2009, two working days after it was transferred from the UK and was surprised why the management of the bank allowed an amount of GH¢50,000 to be cashed from an account which had known very little or no transaction the very morning the money hit it.
Later the same day, she narrated, the supposed Fredrick Starke went to cash another GH¢40,000 and came back on Wednesday to remove another GH¢20,000 and a further GH¢31,000.
On the Thursday, she stated, he withdrew GH¢51,000, saying “and nobody checked with me where the money had come from, whether the reasons he gave that he got it were true. I had no knowledge at all that money had arrived and was being taken out of that account.”
“There is an undercurrent here, I have to say the youth because I’m not sure, they don’t use their names but most of it, coming back to it, feels like it’s payback time for the whites.
They’ve come; they’ve stolen our gold and its time for us to fight back,” she noted, emphasizing that gradually, Sakawa is becoming an institution in Ghana because it is controlled by some high-profile personalities, some of who are not in the country but supervise the activities and operations of these syndicates.
From the narration that she gave, the account that was used to dupe her was opened for just that purpose since it was not a running account.
Marian said the fact that the owner of the account, who happens to be her supposed lover, claimed to be a sole trader when he was going to open the account and considering the fact that no serious transactions had occurred in it for the whole 18months that it was opened as well as the spate of withdrawals, should have prompted the bank and its management to investigate it when the money hit the account.
She could therefore not fathom why a highly-rated bank such as Stanchart would allow itself to be used for such a scam in which they presented the said account as a dollar account when indeed it was a cedi savings account.
Marian was therefore not the least surprised that a staff of the bank had been named and currently standing trial in connection with the case.
The retired businesswoman is bent on not just getting justice but also exposing the schemes that these fraudsters use on their unsuspecting victims in order to help reduce the spate of internet fraud in Ghana.
Though down, she stated that it is not the end of the road for her since she is more than willing to help the police and other security agencies in Ghana with her little experience to clamp down on the activities and operations of these scammers.
Meanwhile, Attorney General and Minister of Justice Betty Mould-Iddrisu has indicated her interest in seeing to the case having logical conclusion, since it is tarnishing the image of Ghana internationally; hence transferring the case from a circuit to a High Court.
Marian was hoping to enjoy the full benefits of her retirement with her ‘internet lover’ but she ended up being duped when she transferred part of her life-long savings to Frederick Stark who claimed to be a retiring American Colonel.
She however has a glimmer of hope in the country’s judiciary and the security agencies, with the conviction that at the end of the day, she can get justice or better still get her money back since the Serious Fraud Office, the Attorney General’s office, the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service and the British High Commission in Ghana all have an interest in the case.