Fraudster arrested

Story: Albert K. Salia
THE proprietor of First Touch Travel and Tours — who is believed to be behind the illegal printing, issuance and distribution of fake Ghanaian passports — has been arrested by the police.
The suspect, Nii Ocquaye Botchway alias Terror alias Gun, was arrested after one of his clients led the police to his office at Bubiashie.
His victim with a genuine visa embossed in the fraudulent passport, was earlier arrested at the Kotoka International Airport for possessing a fake passport.
The victim, who needed a passport to embark on an official duty, had paid ¢1 million to acquire a new passport through a “connection man”.
A week after parting with the money, a “new” passport with the number H1996785 and embossed with her picture, was handed over to her with the date of issuance as December 20, 2005 instead of any date of August 2007 depending on the day it was issued.
The explanation given her for the back-dating of the passport was because she had two valid visas in her old passport, which had expired in 2004.
Throwing more light on the issue, the Director of Passports, Mr Sylvester Parker-Allotey, told the Daily Graphic in an interview that the office detected the loss of some blank passport booklets six weeks ago and alerted the Documentation and Visa Fraud Unit of the Police Service to assist in investigations.
He said it was later noticed that some passports bore the same serial numbers and consequently started tracking the originators of the passports.
He said it was also detected that some of the printed passport numbers did not match the perforated numbers on the booklets.
Mr Parker-Allotey said that meant that the problem was much more serious than anticipated, hence the need to redouble both its intelligence and operational efforts to apprehend the people behind it.
He said it was through such efforts that someone was arrested at the airport for possessing a fictitious passport.
He, therefore, warned the public of the syndicate printing and issuing out duplicate passports.
Mr Parker-Allotey said the police had also arrested a number of people whose passports had already been issued to other persons.
According to him, the victims of the syndicate were persons who are desirous of acquiring passports through passport contractors.
He warned that the law would deal ruthlessly with anyone who was found printing or in possession of such fictitious documents.