Two arrested for allegedly stealing ECG master card
Two persons, an electrician and a trader, have been arrested in connection with the theft of an Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) master card.
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The card, which had an unspecified amount of credit on it, was used by the two persons to illegally sell power to some ECG customers without authority.
The suspects are Richard Ahiaku, 43, an electrician at Asylum Down, Accra, and Eric Ansah, a 36-year-old trader.
They are said to have used the master card to feed the prepaid meters of some customers of the ECG in parts of Asylum Down and its environs in multiples of GH¢2,000.
The master card can be used to load GH¢2,000 of power at a swipe on a prepaid meter.
However, the quantum of power supplied by the two suspects stole could not be immediately quantified since the total number of beneficiaries was not available.
They are said to have charged GH¢1,000 per swipe of the master card on the prepaid meters of the customers.
Arrest
Briefing the Daily Graphic, the leader of a team from the ECG Revenue Protection and Prosecution Unit, Mr Ishmael Tetteh Oku, said the two were arrested based on a tip-off from a suspicious ECG customer who had been approached by Ansah to feed his prepaid meter with power at a lower fee.
He said Ansah was the first to be arrested on Friday, September 16, 2016, and he helped the team to arrest his accomplice Ahiaku.
The two were subsequently handed over to the ECG Investigations Unit for further investigations and prosecution if found culpable.
Solution
Mr Oku said information leading to the arrest of the suspects showed that an ECG customer who bought two refrigerators from Ansah had complained about the probability of his monthly electricity bills shooting up as a result of the refrigerators.
In proffering a solution, Ansah is said to have assured the customer that he could provide access to cheap electricity credit through a smart metering master card.
The customer, who was suspicious of the deal, is said to have feigned interest.
The customer then allowed Ansah to load GH¢2,000 worth of power onto his prepaid meter in his house at Asylum Down and paid GH¢1,000 to the suspect.
Subsequently, the customer was said to have informed the ECG Revenue Protection team about the deal.
Ansah was then tracked and arrested when he went to the said customer’s house for the second time to credit power worth GH¢2,000 onto the customer’s prepaid meter.
After interrogation, Ansah mentioned Ahiaku as the person who had supplied him with the smart metering master card and Ahiaku was subsequently arrested.
Ahiaku told the ECG investigations team that the card had been given to him by a friend who was an employee of a Chinese company in Ghana.
The two have since been placed in police custody for further investigations.
