Corrupt Ghanaian Bank Manager Abuses Power
By Naithen Calderwood
Mr. Kofi Williams, Branch Manager of the Eco Bank of Ghana has been fired following an internal investigation. It has been revealed that Mr. Williams was abusing his senior position at the bank, and had been doing so for almost thirty-five years without getting caught.
His scheme was revealed when his superiors intercepted his emails and discovered he’d been buying mailing lists from suspicious third parties, and using the email addresses he bought to contact a phenomenally huge list of overseas consumers, claiming to need their help to process a large transaction.
He would entice unsuspecting victims with promises of a large monetary incentive, and assured them that there “are practically no risk involved”. Then, when they agreed to help him by providing all of their bank details, he would empty everything in their accounts into his own private account.
The Bank took Mr. Williams; suing him for the thousands of pounds he’d cost them over the years by “wasting company time”. At the hearing, Mr. Williams spoke up about the matter, “It started off as a way of meeting people. The bank was only small in the eighties, and I didn’t have many friends. It was a joke email to begin with… I thought there’s no way people could actually fall for it. People used to reply, with things like ‘hahaha! Good one’, and that would be a conversation starter. Then a year into it someone sent me their bank details as a first response. I was taken aback at first, I thought perhaps they were pulling my leg, and the details were fake, just a joke. But curiosity got the better of me, and I found myself typing in the digits for Mary from Dorset’s bank account… Then I was in. Like I say, I didn’t think anyone would have believed it, but then more came. One after the other, people kept sending me their bank details, and eventually I just decided that if they were too stupid to get my joke, if they couldn’t comprehend my sense of humor, they deserved to have all of their money stolen. I rest my case, your honor.”
Mr. Kofi Williams still awaits the outcome of his trial, in police custody.