‘Juju men’ resort to threats to defraud
Some fraudulent people who introduce themselves as fetish priests (juju men) , have devised new ways of duping unsuspecting members of the public.
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Instead of waiting in their shrines for people to consult them, these juju men reach out to new customers via mobile phone.
Like business marketers, they call numbers randomly and ask their prospective clients to bring money in exchange for spiritual protection with some going as far as telling clients they could be killed by witches if their offer was not considered.
To instil fear into the clients, some claim that they have been contracted by a friend or family member to kill them so the clients have to buy some items to avert the impending calamity.
Experiences
A victim, who spoke to The Mirror said, but for the timely intervention of a friend, she would have sent GH¢300 through a mobile money transaction to a man who called her a couple of weeks ago.
According to her, the caller mentioned her full name, date of birth, place of birth and current location, adding that he had been contacted by a relative to kill her.
She said though she did not have any problem with any of her relatives, her nine-year-old daughter had been on admission in a hospital for about a month so she assumed the supposed curse was the cause of her daughter’s illness.
The jujuman, she said, gave her a 24-hour ultimatum to send the money or die. Sensing danger, she rushed to a friend to borrow money only for her friend to say she had also been contacted by a strange number recently with the person making similar demands.
Ms Awo Frimpong, a resident of Kokomlemle in Accra, said she received a call from an unknown number with the caller introducing himself as a fetish priest.
The caller said he had been contacted by a work colleague of Ms Frimpong to kill her as a result of a misunderstanding between them at the office. Ironically, Ms Frimpong is self-employed, works from home and does not share office with any colleague.
The caller, she said, added that he had a picture of her in his shrine and would go ahead with the process if she did not send him money to buy items to avert it.
“I don’t work with anyone so I knew he was lying right from the start. I started asking him questions and he got angry, saying I was very disrespectful and rude to him so he would go ahead with what he had been contracted to do,” she told The Mirror last week.
Ms Frimpong said she suspected the caller had downloaded the Truecaller App and had access to many numbers and pictures including hers.
How Truecaller works
Developed by True Software Scandinavia AB, Truecaller finds contact details globally, given name or telephone number.
It also has an integrated caller ID service able to keep the phonebook up-to-date with pictures and birthdays.
The data is crowd-sourced from the millions of users who have downloaded the app on their smartphones. As part of the end user agreement, the app asks the user to allow access to the user's address book or contacts on the smartphone.
This data is then uploaded by the app to the company's servers. After going through several data matching, this data is made available to all users.
So out of all the people who know you and have your number stored against your name in their phones, if even one of them uses the Truecaller app, your contact number and name would end up in the Truecaller database.
Police advice
ASP Joseph Benefo Darkwa, Public Relations Officer of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service, when contacted warned the public to ignore calls from those “jujumen”.
He said the callers, whom he believed were fraudulent, only sought to create wealth for themselves through instilling fear in innocent people.
“No proper jujuman would contact you for money to avert a curse. They are just preying on people’s fears, If you receive a call like that, just ignore it but if the person threatens you, report the case to the nearest police station and hand in his or her number to the police,” he said.
ASP Darkwa advised the public to be careful about how they circulate personal data as many fraudsters depended on social media and other internet applications to get contacts and pictures of their victims.