3 supermarket cashiers stand trial for allegedly stealing GH¢1m and deleting invoices from POS

This was reported by the Chronicles Newspaper, dated June 12, 2023.

According to the report, the accused persons, whose names were given as Priscilla Ocean Azadegbe, 25; Blessed Dogbe, 33; and Esther Baba, 25, were charged, before an Accra High Court, with stealing, but they all pleaded not guilty.

The report added that Priscilla allegedly misappropriated GH¢183,778.06 between January and April 2023, while Blessed misappropriated GH¢118,791.55 within the same period. Esther is said to have also misappropriated GH¢33,685.05.

Joojo Amoah Hagan, the presiding judge, admitted to a GH¢200,000 bail for Priscilla, with one surety to be justified by landed property; GH¢150,000 for Blessed to be justified by one surety; and GH¢40,000 for Esther with one surety to be justified.

The prosecuting officer, Inspector Dzigbodi Nego, named Prince Nii Tackie, who is the Human Resource Manager of the supermarket, as the complainant.

He added that Priscilla, Blessed and Esther reside at Teshie, La Adzeman and La Birthday respectively.

Insp. Nego told the court that on May 5, 2023, the complainant and management of a supermarket reported to the police that they had discovered that over GH¢1,000,000 was missing from their records between August 2022 and April 2023.

The complainant resorted to analysing the CCTV footage in the shop to identify the culprits. It was during the CCTV investigation that management saw the accused persons stealing various sums of money daily, the prosecution said.

After, the accused were accosted, and during the investigation, they confessed to taking some of the money but not the full amount being distributed by management, the report added.

Later, while investigations were ongoing, they were given police investigation bail.

It was revealed that the accused persons deleted invoices on the POS machine that corresponded to the amount they stole on each occasion.

It was also discovered that invoices with a face value of GH¢139,575.03 were destroyed from the various POS devices run by the accused individuals in January 2023.

The newspaper, in the report, cited an instance in February 2023 where an invoice with a face value of GH¢84,576 was deleted, as well as from March to April 2023 invoices with face values of GH¢158,026 and GH¢159,466 were respectively deleted.

The accused individuals, according to the report, were unable to explain these funds, totalling GH¢541,643.03 throughout the four months.

It was later determined that the accused had stolen a variety of quantities and kept some on their bank accounts and mobile wallets.

The court was informed that initiatives were being taken to learn more about those accounts and recover the money from them.