The Police have in their custody a middle-aged self-employed man, who gave his name as Bernard Eshun, for posing as an officer of the Ghana Armed Forces, attached to the 42 Engineers Regiment.
He is in the grips of the Commercial Crimes Unit of the Ghana Police Headquarters.
The suspect, who was arrested by some staff of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Accra West Region, was later handed over to the Police.
Narrating the incident, Mr. Marcus Yeboah, an ECG staff with the Revenue Protection Unit, said in 2017, the suspect introduced himself as a personnel of the Ghana National Fire and Rescue Service, when he led some ECG customers to plead for leniency, after they had been busted for tampering with the meter in their house and using power for free.
He said the customers were charged for the power they had illegally consumed, and a new prepaid meter, loaded with the penalty charge was installed to replace the tampered metre.
Mr. Yeboah said monitoring of the customers’ accounts later revealed that even though they had been barred from purchasing prepaid credits till the penalty charge was fully paid, the customers had not made any payments.
He said a field investigation revealed later that they had bypassed the new meter and were using power for free.
Upon interrogation of the household, Eshun was mentioned as the one who facilitated the illegal connection.
The customers claimed that the ‘fake officer’ collected three thousand Ghana Cedis to pay to ECG on their behalf, which resulted in the entire household being disconnected again.
The suspect, according to Mr. Yeboah, showed up in the ECG Regional Office, this time, fully clothed in military uniform to seek an intervention for the disconnected customers.
This made the staff suspicious, and once he was not able to prove his military identity, he was arrested and handed over to the police, Mr Yeboah added.
Mr. George Appiah-Kubi, the Accra West General Manager of the ECG, cautioned the public against dealing with persons who were not staff of ECG.
He said where customers were unsure of the identity of anyone purporting to work for the company, an identity card should be demanded, or the company should be alerted.
The Commercial Crime Unit said in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency that it was continuing with investigations into the matter.
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Source: GNA
