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-Telecos Sabotage Customers ID Project
-Register and Port numbers without IDs
When
the National Communication Authority (NCA) announced for SIM card
registration and Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in January 18, 2010 and
July 7, 2011 respectively, many Ghanaians heaved a sigh of relief,
believing that it would curb a lot of criminal activity associated with
the use of mobile phones.
However, with the present trend of
people just registering existing and new SIMs and porting existing cell
phone numbers to other networks without providing any form of
identification as required by the legislative framework regulating the
exercise, obviously, renders the whole exercise that precious state
resources were used to advertise needless.
Noble as the exercise
was, particularly when the NCA announced during its sensitization
program prior to the start of the registration that the exercise will
help curb incidents such as loss of phone through theft, nuisance text
messages, scams, threats, raising unnecessary alarms or creating panic,
deliberately or otherwise, traders who hawk SIM cards; sometimes acting
as agents for some of the telecom operators, per our investigation
register SIM cards or port numbers without requesting for any required
identification card.
In this, existing or new prospective
subscribers, who intend to use the SIM card to perpetrate fraud or other
nefarious activities, manage to register or port their numbers with
fake names, fictional residential address and imaginary dates of birth.
In
line with the licensing requirement of all the telecom operators as
provided for in the Electronic Communication Act, Act 775, 2008, which
mandates all telecom operators to keep the data of their subscribers, in
order to register a new or an existing SIM card, “individuals must
provide a valid photo-ID such as; Driver’s License, Passport, NHIS card,
Voter’s ID and National ID Card whiles foreigners are required to use
passports or any other travel document.
Several weeks of
investigations by The Al-Hajj has shown that, in spite of the NCA’s
description of such act as illegal and criminal, some agents of the
telecom companies continues to use fake bio-data to register SIM cards,
and then sell it at cut throat prices to people, mostly foreigners
without the required ID cards.
In most cases, those without the
ID cards and who cannot afford the price of the ‘pre-registered” SIMs
are allowed to provide their own unverifiable details to activate a SIM
card.
Worrying as this may be, our investigations also revealed
that some registration agents aid and abet prospective new subscribers
to port existing numbers of people to other networks, thereby robbing
and cutting off the original owners of such numbers.
The Al-Hajj
has unearthed that some fraudsters, particularly those into cyber fraud
approach registration agents without ID cards; and sometimes induce
them with money to allow them port numbers of other existing
subscribers, mostly beginning with either 0244, 0277, 0208, 0266 and
0233, which obviously does not belong to them, but in no time become
theirs after porting.
The notion is that, numbers beginning with such digits are owned by well to do or ‘big men’ in the society.
For
instance, if these crooks want to port an MTN number to Tigo, the one
wanting to port will approach the agent and tell him, he wants to port
MTN to Tigo, but he is without any ID card and the SIM card of the
number he wants to port.
Because the agents are paid based on the
number of SIMs ported and in the bid to port as many SIMs as possible,
the registration agent will remark “give me something and I will do it
for you.”
The agent will then take the fake details of the
imposter porting the number and then coach him by saying “when you get
home, insert the MTN chip you want to port to Tigo into your phone and
send PORT to 6060 as a message…wait for a while, you will receive a
message from 7070, after that remove the MTN chip and insert the Tigo
chip and dial 842…load two cedisTigo recharge card on it and start using
it.”
During the investigation, it was unraveled that because the
imposter/s are not able to get the numbers they want to port
immediately, they manage to use other people’s IDcards (lost cards) to
get the original number they had parted from the service providers
through very crafty means.
For instance, they go with lost ID
cards of other innocent people to get the numbers under the pretext of
replacing a lost SIM card.
They then use the number for a number
of ‘operations’ including defrauding unsuspecting foreigners and
sometimes Ghanaians. A typical case in point was when the NCA on
February 6, 2012 released a report, which indicated that of all the ID
cards submitted for verification that year, a colossal 5,580,875 came
out as registered with invalid ID cards.
Surprising, however, The
Al-Hajj uncovered that should all telecom operators in Ghana decide to
go according to provisions in the SIM Registration Regulation, LI 2006,
which legally mandates operators to legally deactivate all unregistered
SIMs in the country, millions of subscribers will be disengaged, despite
having ‘duly’ registered their SIMs.
This is because; many
subscribers, who have registered their SIMS as far back as 2010, still
have their registration pending. Ordinarily, subscribers this reporter
approached when asked to send a blank message on their phones to 400 on
all networks to confirm their registration status, either receive this
message “confirmation of your registration is still pending; however,
please be assured your number will not be disconnected. Visit any of our
office to re-register your earliest convenience,” or receive messages
on their phones that their SIMs have been registered in another person’s
name.
Watertight Evidence
For the avoidance of doubt,
this reporter managed to register MTN, TIGO, AIRTEL, GLO AND VODAFONE
SIMs with five different bio-data without any ID card and ported and
existing AIRTEL number in a different name, also without an ID card.
Numbers below were registered by this reporter with different bio-data;
Number: 0543741517
Name: Ibrahim Ali
Date of Birth: September 2, 1988
Number: 0508787850
Name: Nii Armah Aayittey
Date of Birth: January 5, 1983
Number: 0263663822
Name: Michael Adu Gyamfi
Date of Birth: March 18, 1984
Number: 057484171
Name: Isaac Somuah
Date of Birth: December 10, 1981
Number: 0236888470
Name: Michael Dodzi
Date of Birth: August 9, 1984 |
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