MTN Ghana has revealed its subsidiary, Mobile Money Limited has been able to collaborate with the various security agencies to arrest more than 40 fraudsters on its MOMO platform.
This revelation comes as the Bank of Ghana has been raising concerns that the rising fraud cases on MTN’s MOMO platform are threatening the stability of the banking system.
General Manager of Mobile Money Limited, Eli Hene, in an interview indicated that the company is committed to dealing with the growing misconduct by some unscrupulous people.
“In terms of arrest… we have done over 40 arrests already and these include swoops, which means that we are able to predict and therefore go in to spaces where we believe these people are operating from and pick them up.”
He made it clear that, the company’s collaboration with the police helped it to nab the suspected criminals. Because of the success of this collaboration, Mr Hene pointed out that they are going to ensure that the joint action is continued.
“The partnership with the police… has helped. And those are the partnerships that have helped us to do the various arrests that we have done. And I think that is where we should begin to go and provide consistency in the approach.”
Again, he said that close to 16 million people in the country use Mobile Money services and as such more education needs to done to prevent people who are new to the service from being duped.
“15.5 million Ghanaians people using the service that means there are a lot of people that have come into the space who needs education to understand how the service evolves.”
According to him, the company is focusing on investing in “tools that will help predict” the actions of these fraudsters. This, he pointed out, will help the company easily track the activities of fraudsters.
“So before a fraudster takes an action you’ve already predicted and you’ve picked that person up and you begin to monitor that person before he takes the action.”
Last month, the Bank of Ghana issued a warning to all financial institutions to be mindful of a new mobile money fraud type.
According to the BoG, fraudsters call bank staffs, tellers especially, claiming to be from the head office of one of the Telecommunication companies.
The fraudsters then proceed to tell the staff that they have been instructed to train them on the reversal process on mobile money.
In a statement, the central bank noted that,
“As part of the process, the staff would be asked to enter certain codes on the mobile platform. The codes entered lead to the debiting of the bank’s mobile wallet.”
Because of this growing concern, Mr Hene indicated that Ghanaians must “vigilant.”
