Police nab 62-year-old fraudster

The Ashanti Regional Police Command has arrested Kofi Boakye, a 62-year-old man, for defrauding several people under the pretext of selling cars to them.

Nana Osei Nyarko Amponsah, popularly known as Kingpin, has been in the fraudulent job for 20 years and had been arrested a few times but always managed to secure bail and, subsequently, abscond.

Seeing the ‘old man’ under police grips once again, and the number of victims who identified him, DCOP Kofi Boakye, the Ashanti Regional Commander could not hide his frustrations that the suspect had, all these years, escaped prison.

“We should have handed you over to the victims so that they will deal with you”, said the Police Chief as he took his seat to brief the media on the full scale of the offence.

“He would run away immediately he is given bail and the court always granted him bail too. He has been doing this for 20 years. I remember when I was in Accra, we arrested him a few times, but the court gave him bail and somehow he managed to abscond from prosecution and kept on with this illegal job,” DCOP Boakye said.

Briefing the media, DCOP Boakye said on September 8, 2015, at the Manhyia Hospital in Kumasi, the suspect allegedly swindled a female victim (name withheld) of GHc25,000.00 under the guise of selling her a Toyota Pontiac Vibe.

Narrating how the issue occurred, the victim said the suspect showed the car to her husband (name withheld) at his work place at Juaso, in the Asante Akim District of Ashanti.

According to her, acting on her husband’s instruction and together with her husband’s driver, they met the suspect and his nephew at the Drivers Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) where they were to complete documentations on the transfer of the car.

However, the suspect, she disclosed, told her that he was sick and asked that they take him to the Manhyia Hospital after which they would come back to continue the transfer process.

“We went there and at the hospital we saw the car parked close to Otec FM. He also went inside the hospital premises but we did not see which consulting room he went to. He came back later to ask that we pay the money before he would allow us to test the car”.

She said “I left them there because I had to return to the office. The man after receiving the money told his nephew to go into the car and bring the documents so that they could sign them”.

Interestingly, the man, she said, went and never came back after several minutes.

“So the old man asked my partner to go and tell his nephew that the documents were inside the air-bag. He went but found that the car was gone. He came back to where he left the suspect and he too was gone”.

DCOP Kofi Boakye urged residents and prospective car buyers to only do business with recognised garages and not individuals because the former provides very minimal risks.