The Ghana Police Service has arrested eight suspects for allegedly beating a 21-year-old man during his initiation into an internet fraud operation at Kotokrom in the Sunyani West Municipality of the Bono Region.
The Bono Regional Police Command disclosed this in a statement dated October 9, following a distress call received by its Regional Operations Unit on October 4, 2026, over an alleged attack on a man in the community.
The command said officers who responded to the call found the victim, identified as Godstime Umukoro, with multiple marks of assault on his body and arrested the suspects at the scene.
“The Regional Operations Unit has arrested eight (8) suspects involved in fraudulent acts and assaulting one Godstime Umukoro, aged 21, at Kotokrom, a suburb in Sunyani West Municipality of the Bono Region,” the statement read.
It added, “On 4th October 2026, at about 4:30 p.m., the patrol team received a distress call that a group of people was attacking a person at Kotokrom.”
The suspects were identified as Peter Mbam, 24; Godwin Moses, 26; Humble Oweifah, 18; Osas Ogbemudia, 30; Samuel Aisosa, 22; Ashile Godbess, 24; Alexander Uyuo, 30; and Patrick Romans, 25.
According to the police, the suspects allegedly admitted during interrogation that they had subjected Umukoro to severe beating as part of his initiation into the internet fraud business.
“During interrogation, the suspects stated that they subjected the victim to severe beating as part of his initiation into the Internet fraud business, a process they claimed they had also undergone,” the statement said.
The command said preliminary investigations indicated that the suspects were brought to Ghana by a man identified as Nwachukwu King Augustine, whom it described as their chairman.
The police also alleged that the group used downloaded images of foreign military personnel to deceive people online.
“They lure innocent victims using downloaded images of foreign military men and start chatting with them under the pretext that they are at war front in Yemen. When they succeed in collecting the victims’ money, it is then paid into their boss’s account,” the statement added.
The Bono Regional Police Command commended members of the public for their intervention and reaffirmed its commitment to working with residents to combat crime in the region.
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