Spiritualist jailed 10 years for fraud

A Tarkwa circuit court has sentenced a 31-year-old spiritualist, Noah Bayone, to 10 years imprisonment for defrauding by false pretence.

He was convicted on his own plea.

Prosecuting Police Detective Chief Inspector Oscar Amponsah told the court presided over by Mr Samuel Obeng Diawuo that the complainant, Thomas Owusu Washington, is a businessman who deals in gold and resides at Tema Community 2 while the offender is a resident at Ackoon a suburb of Tarkwa.

According to the prosecutor, in 2011, the complainant noticed that his business was going down, so he decided to seek the assistance of a juju man (spiritualist) to help him reverse the financial difficulty he was going through.

He said when the complainant contacted Bayone he promised to help him and negotiated with the complainant to bring sufficient money to enable him buy an item from India to perform some rituals for the complainant to get either gold or money.

Detective Amponsah said after the two had interacted on phone, the complainant upon the request of the convict sent a total sum of GHc107,156.96 through Western union, Ghana post and Ghana Commercial Bank.

The prosecutor said after Bayone collected the money he failed to honour his promise and went underground.

He said the complainant reported the incident to the police on September 22, this year, which led to the arrest of the convict on September 24.