GH¢56 million Lost In Banking Fraud In 2022

The Bank of Ghana’s Banking Sector and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions (SDTI) fraud report shows GH¢56 million was lost in 2,998 fraud cases in the year 2022.

The amount of money is 7.83% lower than the amount lost in 2021 but the number of cases is 27.74% higher than that of 2021.

It also shows attempted fraud with a loss value of GH¢165 million was detected, having Cash theft as the highest recorded fraud in the banking sector last year.

Cash theft (1622), Cyber – Email fraud (422), Fraudulent Withdrawals (347), Impersonation (285), E-money (149), Forgery and manipulation of Docs (62), Cheque Fraud (32), Lending/credit fraud (29), Burglary (27), ATM POS (9) Remittance (1) and others (13) are the fraud types reported in 2022 by banking and deposit-taking institutions.

“With respect to 2022, the top five (5) fraud categories are Cash theft (cash suppression), Cyber/email, Fraudulent withdrawals, Impersonation and EMoney frauds, in descending order. Cash theft (cash suppression) was the highest recorded fraud type, which was predominantly in the Rural and Community banking sector. The year 2022 saw a 6.01% increase from 1,530 in 2021 to 1,622,” the report said.

Forgery
Forgery and manipulation of the document are said to have recorded the most losses in 2022. The attempted incidents stood at GH¢34 million and a loss value of approximately GH¢33 million.

Fraudulent Withdrawal
Fraudulent withdrawal recorded a loss of GH¢7 million for the period under review. This figure is a significant jump from the loss value of GH¢0.62 million recorded in 2021.

Cheque Fraud
The report showed most of the Cheque fraud cases recorded in 2022 were issues of cloned cheques. The fraud loss recorded in 2022 was GH¢5 million as compared to GH¢0.62 million in 2021, representing an increase of 1254.46%.

Cyber-email Fraud
Cyber-email fraud, the report noted, recorded a loss of GH¢4.3 million in 2022 as compared to GH¢2.6 million in 2021, an increase of 65.55%.

Cash Theft
Cash theft recorded a 7.12 % decrease.