Fake ‘BNI’ officer nabbed

A self-styled staff of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region, identified as Simon Yaw Dabankah, is in deep waters.

He posed as a BNI staff ostensibly to dent the image of New Mission Academy, a reputable private school in Kumasi, but he was eventually exposed.

Earlier, he had posed also as a staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES), saying that he had been assigned to investigate a case at the New Mission Academy.

He said he had wanted to establish if New Mission Academy was clandestinely working against the progress of Nagie’s Educational Centre and Lutheran School, which are private schools in Kumasi.

Yaw Dabankah lied that Dr. Tandoh, the Coordinator of free Senior High School (SHS) in Accra, had tasked him to do the job.

He was to find out if New Mission Academy had paid the West African Examination Council (WAEC) to mark down the examination papers of Nagies Educational Complex and Lutheran School in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), which affected the two schools in the 2017 and 2018 results, respectively.

Yaw Dabankah even provided ‘Dr Tandoh’s’ phone number, and when a call was placed on it, the receiver indeed admitted being Dr. Tandoh.

The accused person, as part of his investigations, succeeded in taking the Master Copy of New Mission Academy’s school result and an amount of GH¢ 1,200.

Later on, Macos Oduro Sarpong, the complainant in the case, who was sensing something fishy, realised that Yaw Dabankah was an imposter.

He, therefore, alerted the police who apprehended him for interrogation in Kumasi.

The accused told the police that he is a staff of the BNI and he intentionally posed as GES staff to enable him to carry out his investigations at the New Missions Academy.

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Yaw Dabankah aka ‘Richmond’ was put before Circuit Court Three in Kumasi on Tuesday, March 5, 2019.

He was charged with ‘defrauding by false pretenses by means of impersonation’. His plea was not taken. Only the facts were read in court.

The court has granted him bail in the sum of GH¢ 20,000 with three sureties – two to be justified. He will be back in court on March 20.