Growing up all I knew was pen-pals, with Joyce Meyer taking the cake.
Where you write letters, yes handwritten letters to “imaginary” friends in Europe. I always had questions as to why all these pen-pals were foreigners, few or none from our parts of the world.
Little did I know Ghanaians had something up their sleeves that were going to manifest soon rather than later. Nothing much was expected from these pals aside the exchange of letters, all that was guaranteed one was a cluster of motivational and inspirational books and audios.
As the world revolved, pen-palling also did and I think people grew increasingly tired of the library these books were forcibly making them establish. The advent of internet fraud was birthed, rebranded “sakawa”. With this ‘our people’ coax and coerce these Westerners presumably with black magic to extremes that they end up sending their entire fortune to the shores of Ghana, with a comforting excuse that ‘we are just taking back what the whites took from us during the slave trade’.
Such foolery and display of miniature thought. It looks like the law has caught up with three of these folks, they wouldn’t be smiling to the bank.
Three persons are before the Accra circuit court for allegedly defrauding a Danish consultant, one Poul Muller, the sum of $93,200.
They are Karim Yahaya, unemployed; Desmond Agyei Asamoah, security man and Vanessa Twumasi, student, all based in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.
Chief superintendent Duuti Tuaruka says between January and February the suspected fraudsters conspired and defrauded Poul by falsely claiming that Karim was one Rose Gary, a white lady resident in Ghana who could supply him with gold.
In a court presided over by Aboagye Tandoh, the accused persons variously denied the charges and were remanded until June 14.
Until your cup is full, you may think you are life’s favourite son. Nothing indeed lasts forever.