PHOTO: Police arrest television stealing syndicate

The suspects were  identified as Nana Kwame Asare, 42, an electrician, Kwesi Yeboah, 40, an electronic mechanic, and Kofi Danquah, 36, alias Aponkye, a sprayer.

They are said to have taken delivery of 20 sets of 40-inch flat screen Samsung television sets from a shop owner at Nima on the pretext of supplying them to a company.

The mastermind of the syndicate, Asare, is said to have called a shop attendant at Dzorwulu in Accra through a contact which had been displayed on a signpost having a notice of a request for 20 television sets.

Shop attendant 

Briefing the Daily Graphic, the Tesano Police Commander, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Edward Tetteh, said the first shop attendant, who was out of stock, contacted another shop owner at Nima and gave the contact to Asare.

He said on May 13, 2016, Asare called the owner of the shop at Nima and claimed he was sending  errand boys to collect the television sets to be delivered to a company at Lapaz after which he would make payment for them.

The owner of the shop, he said, asked two of his attendants to join the truck after the men had loaded the television sets onto it to receive the money.

He said at Lapaz, the television sets were unloaded in front of a company’s premises (name withheld), and re-loaded onto another truck shortly after the two men who had been sent by Asare had entered a house behind the company with the excuse of visiting the washroom.

Arrest 

Mr Tetteh said the attendants, who had been sent to collect the money told the police that after waiting for 30 minutes outside the house after the second truck had been driven away they  entered the house only to find out that the men had absconded.

The suspects are said to have shared the television sets among themselves after giving the two truck drivers one each to offset the cost of transportation.

He said the police arrested two of the suspects, Asare and Yeboah, in a hotel at Gbawe when they contracted a television repairer to sell two of the television sets for them.

The television repairer then  contacted the original owner of the television sets from whose shop at Nima the suspects had collected the television sets, leading to the arrest of the two suspects.

The third suspect, Danquah,  is said to have used one of the television sets as collateral for a loan of GH¢2000 and had sold two others earlier.

He said the police had since retrieved five of the television sets