‘MOMO FRAUD’ IS A NATIONAL CANKER – MTN CEO DECLARES

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MTN Ghana, Mr. Selorm Adadevoh has observed that fraudulent transactions or activities within the mobile money telecommunications sub-sector otherwise known as ‘MoMo fraud’ is not only a problem for his company but also a canker for Ghana.

 He therefore appealed to Ghanaians to see the issue as a national problem so as to elicit the appropriate holistic efforts and responses to nip the practice in the bud.

Mr. Adadevoh made the observation at this year’s Southern Ghana MTN Editors and Media Forum for journalists and media practitioners held in the national capital of Accra on Friday, 20th August, 2021.

The conference physically brought together more than thirty (30) journalists from Accra whereas the other editors and colleague media practitioners from the Volta, Oti and Eastern Regions joined the two-and-half hour meeting via the zoom technology.

This year’s forum was unique in that it coincided with the 25th Anniversary Celebration of MTN Ghana under the theme, ’25 Years of Brightening Lives’.

Data from the Cyber Crime Unit of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) in Accra showed that in 2019 alone, more than three hundred (300) mobile money incidents were reported, all resulting in huge financial losses to the telecom service providers and their agents.

Mr. Adadevoh empathized with all Ghanaians who have lost money to MoMo fraud. According to him, MTN Ghana has put in place a technical team of forty (40) experts who are detecting and blocking all fraudulent MoMo transactions in the system, adding that MTN would continue to explore or evolve new strategies to deal with the canker as technology improves.

The MTN CEO announced that mobile money fraudsters would now have their phones blocked across all networks in the country, explaining that the move is aimed among other measures at curbing the high incidence of mobile money fraud.

Mr. Adadevoh however conceded that MoMo fraud complaints have reduced in recent times resulting from the effective collaboration his outfit has had and continues to have with the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications and other relevant stakeholders.

He stated that MTN Ghana is working with the GPS and other security agencies to arrest and prosecute such fraudsters. ‘We have formed an alliance and created a barrier that makes being a fraudster very hard’, Mr. Adadevoh intimated.

Since its inception a couple of years ago, MTN Ghana has so far contracted some two hundred and twenty thousand (220,000) mobile money (MoMo) agents across the country for its operations. About five thousand (5000) of these agents have been provided with formal employment by the giant mobile telecommunications network company in the country.

Source: Akukorku Media