A 32-year old Nigerian, Barwa Aikins, was Wednesday sentenced to two years imprisonment by the Accra Circuit Court for dealing in fake MTN recharge cards. The modus operandi of Aikins was to collect used MTN recharge cards and print the MTN logo on the used authentication number to make it look new and then offer them for sale to the unsuspecting public. Luck, however, eluded him when on September 10, this year, he purchased a genuine GH¢5.00 card and changed it with one of his fake cards and returned it to the phone card dealer that he was no longer interested in it. The dealer detected that the card returned by Aikins was fake and caused his arrest. Aikins pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing forged documents and uttering forged documents and was accordingly convicted on his own plea. According to the facts of the case, Aikins bought a GH¢5.00 MTN recharge card from the complainant, Regina Lomotey, a phone card dealer at Mataheko, on September 10, 2010. The complainant said Aikins later returned to say that the person who sent him was not interested in the card any more but the complainant detected that the card with serial number 227912122 was fake. She raised an alarm and Aikins was arrested and when he was searched instantly, nine pieces of the GH¢5.00 recharge cards with the respective serial numbers 242016369, 239349741, 228441787, 228718282, 227885594, 227975734, 227882702 and 241949151 were found on him. When Aikins was arrested and taken to the police station, he disclosed that the cards were given to him by a certain young man he did not name. All the 10 cards were sent to MTN head office for verification and they turned out to be used cards. In another development, a 27-year-old Nigerien spiritualist, Mohammed Umar, was sentenced to eight years imprisonment with hard labour for defrauding a man of $3,000 and GH¢350 on the pretext of doubling those amounts. Umar pleaded guilty to one count of defrauding by false pretence. Source: Daily Graphic