Skip to footer

Fake US embassy in Ghana operated for 'about a decade'

Before it was shut down, the fake embassy in Ghana's capital, Accra, issued an unknown number of counterfeit and stolen visas.

A fake US embassy run by Ghanaian and Turkish organized crime rings has been shut down after "about a decade" of operation, the State Department has announced. 

The fake embassy operation, located in Ghana's capital city of Accra, issued counterfeit and fraudulently obtained visas at the price of $6,000 for roughly ten years, according to officials. One hundred and fifty passports from 10 countries and visas from the United States, India, South Africa, and the European Schengen zone were recovered in raids. 

According to the State Department, the ringleaders of the scam were able to bribe corrupt officials to "look the other way," allowing the fake embassy to run "unhindered." As of press time, it was unknown how many people had been defrauded by the operation. 

"This is a shocker," an anonymous Ghanaian official told the Associated Press. 

The fake embassy, which featured a US flag and portrait of President Obama, didn't accept walk-in visa appointments. Instead, the State Department said, they traveled to "the most remote parts of West Africa" to find customers. They would then shuttle the customers to Accra, rent them a room at a nearby hotel, and shuttle them to and from the fake embassy locations. 

The process may sound fishy at best to outside observers, and the shabby pink building that served as the operation's headquarters, while featuring an American flag and portrait of President Obama, looked nothing like the real US embassy.

But, as journalist Sammy Darko in Accra pointed out on BBC's Focus on Africa, the victims of the scam had likely never been to an embassy before and didn't know what to expect. 

"They also find white people there and they assume that it is the US embassy," Mr. Darko said. 

The "consular officers" at the fake embassy were not American, but rather Turkish citizens who spoke English and Dutch, according to the official report. 

The announcement that the fake embassy operation had been shut down was first published by the State Department on Nov. 2, 2016, but has only gained traction in the media in recent days. The story appeared to have been just picked up by Ghanaian media last week, The Washington Post reports. 

This report includes material from the Associated Press and Reuters.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Fake US embassy in Ghana operated for 'about a decade'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2016/1205/Fake-US-embassy-in-Ghana-operated-for-about-a-decade
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe