Bella Issaka Tahiru Adams, 32, who while in the employment of the South Birim Rural Bank falsified accounts and stole GHC 24,000 belonging to a customer, was on Thursday sentenced to three years in prison in hard labour by the Asamankese Circuit Court.
Adams who pleaded not guilty was ordered to pay back the money after serving his sentence.
Police Inspector D. T. Nartey, prosecuting, told the court that somewhere in February 2008, officials of the bank employed Adams as a "susu"
collector on commission basis and that involved going round to mobilize funds from the Susu customers of the bank.
Besides, some current accounts holders of the bank who stayed far from the bank took advantage of that service and decided to deposit money into their accounts through Adams.
The prosecutor said the customers filled in the pay-in-slips after, which Adams took the money to the bank and deposited into the respective accounts of the customers.
He said in July 2008, Madam Juliana Asamoah, a current account holder, requested for her statement of account.
After reconciling the statement of account with her records, it came to light that an amount of GHC 24,000 was missing from the account, while some figures in the statement had been understated.
One of the transactions revealed that on May 19 2008, Madam Asamoah gave an amount of GHC 1,500 to the convict to be deposited into her account, but Adams deposited only GHC 1,000 instead.
Some copies of her pay-in-book had been torn by Adams and it was established that on June 13, July 7, July 30, and August 2008, that the
convict banked GHC 500, GHC 1000, GHC 700 and GHC 1300, respectively on behalf of the customers but the pay-in-slips in respect of those transactions could not be traced in the customer's pay-in-book.
The customer after detecting those anomalies reported the incident to the branch manager who in turn informed their head office who caused the
arrest of Adams.
In his caution statement submitted to the police, Adams admitted stealing GHC 5,000 and after investigations, he was charged with falsifying accounts and stealing.