The Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has revealed that some internal staff of banks collaborated with fraudsters in recent mobile money scam that hit the financial sector.

Dr Ernest Addison revealed that the practice saw some of the bank's own staff collaborate with these fraudsters to defraud customers of these banks.

He maintained that because of this action “they are asking the banks to be vigilant and strengthen their own control to protect their systems.”

The Governor added, “that it’s very important these commercial banks carry out the necessary due diligence on the kind of staff they employ.

Background

The Bank of Ghana has issued a warning to all financial institutions to be mindful of a new mobile money fraud type.

According to BoG, fraudsters call bank staffs, tellers especially, claiming to be from the head office of one of the telecommunication companies.

The fraudsters then proceed to tell the staff that they have been instructed to train them on the reversal process on mobile money.

“As part of the process, the staff would be asked to enter certain codes on the mobile platform. The codes entered lead to the debiting of the bank’s mobile wallet.”

“Per its mandate, the Bank of Ghana intends to raise awareness among institutions to this particular fraud to help minimise its occurrence,” the BoG said in a statement.

The institution adviced banks to ensure that all staff mambers are made aware of the fraud type and adviced to have at least two people handling all mobile money transactions at a bank branch.

Bank of Ghana introduces Financial Securities Operations Center  

Answering questions from journalists after the Monetary Policy Committee meeting, Dr Addison maintained the central bank is currently working on establishing a Financial Securities Operations Center which would be looking at the cyber security issues for the entire financial sector.

He maintained this and other measures would help to protect the entire financial sector from activities of these fraudsters.