A former Mobile Money (MoMo) attendant, 27-year-old Gifty Tetteh recounts how she was jailed thirty months for claiming she mistakenly cashed in Thirty Thousand Ghana cedis to a customer instead of Three Thousand Ghana cedis in 2018.
She said she operated a busy MoMo joint together with her employer at Afariwa, a suburb of Tema.
In an interview with Crime Check TV GH, Tetteh said on that faithful day, overwhelmed with customers and in a bid to hurriedly attend to other customers, she entered Thirty Thousand Ghana cedis instead of Three Thousand Ghana cedis to be sent to the customer.
The young lady said she did not notice the erroneous transaction immediately until they had closed and was rendering accounts of the day’s business.
“The customer asked me to send the money to a third party. When I realized the blunder, I drew the attention of my employer who asked me to call the person the money was sent to. The person did not pick up the call so we had to fall on MTN to block the number,” she recalled.
She said before the Telecom giant could block the number to prevent the recipient from cashing out the amount, “the person had emptied his account.”
Her arrest
The now ex-convict indicated that her employer then asked her to refund the money making a monthly payment of One Thousand Ghana cedis after he reported her to the Tema Community 22 Police. Tetteh said she was able to pay for four months with the help of relatives but unfortunately she could not raise the Thousand cedis in the fifth month as she deposited Eight Hundred Ghana cedis. This she said infuriated her employer.
“I was paid Four Hundred Ghana cedis by my employer so it was the contribution of some relatives that I was able to pay part of the money for Four months. When the CID officer told my employer that I brought Eight Hundred Ghana cedis in the fifth month, he asked the police to take the matter to Court for the Court to make a decision on it,” she narrated.
“That same day the CID officer called me and informed me that they were taking me to court the following day. I did not sleep the whole night.”
She said she appeared before Court without a lawyer and therefore could not defend herself.
Tetteh said she was sentenced to thirty months imprisonment and after serving her sentence she is directed by the court to refund the Thirty Thousand cedis.
In a reaction to the story, Tetteh’s employer said she is known for stealing from him and that the young lady stole the money and loaned it to friends and used some to stake bets.
“Tetteh stole the money and it is not a mistake she made in sending the money. She has stolen almost Sixty Thousand Ghana cedis from me. She was about to marry so she stole the money to buy items for her marriage, loaned some of the money to friends and she was good at betting so she staked bets also. This is not the first time she has stolen from me,” he clarified.
Crime Check Foundation (CCF) has introduced programmes including the latest ‘Stay Away From Trouble’ as part of its crime prevention advocacy project.
Through these programmes CCF cautions the general public against acts that could land them in trouble in a bid to curb crime.
The Foundation screens one-on-one interviews with prison inmates bringing to bear acts that landed them into prison and the difficulties they face in custody.
It has also paid the fines of many petty offenders for their release.
By Rudolph Nandi
Email: rudnankp4@gmail.com
