Telecom giant MTN has blocked about seven mobile money merchant accounts used for the operations of Ponzi scheme Savana Brokerage, Starr business has learnt.
The action comes after Starr Business broke the news of over GHC2 million in investment by Ghanaians that has been locked up with the Kenyan online firm.
MTN in a statement on the development said “Good Morning, We have been receiving complaints from some of our customers regarding payments they have made to some accounts via mobile money which was supposed to be a premium payment for an investment they were making.
“The company involved is Savannah Brokerage who has promised 200% return on investment to their customers on their website and have been using some MoMo accounts in collecting those premium payments.
“During initial investigations by the MoMo Fraud Team, some accounts involved have been blacklisted. We are also informing the regulator as part of our normal periodic suspicious transactions reporting and internally continuing with further investigations with the assistance of BRM and RA”.
MTN further asked its customers to resort to the
MMFraudTeam.GH@mtn.com in getting their concerns over the brokerage firm resolved.
.Below are other numbers involved in the payments. Reversal requests from below numbers should also be sent to the fraud team
DE-CAPILLON ENTERPRISE – 557930040
KWAME BADERU ISAAC VENTURES KWAME BADERU ISAAC – 249305341
HAWABOOK VENTURES – 557955700
MATILDA YEBOAA – 240211070
AL-AWWAL CATERING SERVICE – 542074011
ONE ON ONE VENTURES LATERBIOKOSHIE GR – 542056755
KONADU ENTERPRISE – 241766233
Background
Per the address on the website before it went down, Savana Brokerage is a Kenyan Company pointing to a location in Nairobi.
According to the website, the company started operations in Ghana from 2014.
They were operating three packages; Knight Package, Queen Package and Kings Package.
Knight Package was a weekly form of investment – every customer was to invest more than GH 50. You were promised 10% on your money on weekly basis so you get 40% return on your capital at the end of the month.
Queen package; you get 60% on your investment money after a month.
Kings Package promised 100% return on an investment. The investment was to last for three month.
To invest, the victims say, the money is to be paid through an MTN Merchant and the operators of the scheme get access to the funds.
Currently, MTN appears to have blocked all the merchant accounts. But there are huge monies stack in the accounts.
The merchants are not able to go for the funds due to some irregularities and tax issues. The accounts are also under investigation by the telecom company.
When contacted, an official of MTN said the company is not in the position to comment on the issue.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/Osei Owusu Amankwaah
