Sadat Fusheini
A Tamale District Magistrate Court II presided over by Augustine Essah, has remanded a 28-year-old trader, Sadat Fusheini, into prison custody to reappear on March 4, 2014.
The suspect pleaded not guilty to all four counts of stealing, despite his earlier admission of the offence in his caution statement.
According to the facts of the case as presented to the court, Sadat Fusheini poses as a banker and succeeds in defrauding unsuspecting clients at various banks in the Tamale Metropolis in the guise of assisting them to complete the filling in of deposit slips.
He was reported to have been engaged in the act for two years now, and was arrested last Friday at the Tamale Main Branch of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) in an attempt to outsmart a customer who was trying to lodge some cash in her account at the bank.
According to police investigations, he was reported to be a regular visitor to some prominent banks in the city and was always neatly dressed, loitering at busy banking halls as though he was a staff.
On spotting persons with cash trying to fill in deposit slips, he offers to help and either ask his victim to buy him a pen outside or make a photocopy of the deposit slip at a communications centre close by.
Victims disclosed that upon their return they no longer spot the man ? as he bolts away with their cash.
In other instances, he reportedly takes advantage of the crowded nature of the banks and convinces his victims that he will be able to fast-track the process, and ends up stealing the money.
Managers of most of the banks confirmed that their customers had been victims of the antics of this fraudster, and that account for the reason why staff wear name tags.
Last Friday at the ADB, the suspect was spotted dressed almost in the same outfit as staff of the bank and was invited by the Branch Manager for interrogation.
Frightened on entering the manager?s office, he started confessing of how he had stolen cash of customers at the bank.
He was whisked to the Tamale Main Branch of the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB), where previous recordings of similar acts were played from the secret cameras and he identified himself as the one.
Four of the victims who lost between GH?1,000 and GH?6,000 during an identification parade, identified the suspect, who admitted the offence in his caution statement as having duped many customers of some banks under a similar modus operandi.
From Stephen Zoure, Tamale
