Tonight I heard on NPR that some group in Ghana put together a fake US Embassy, and ran it for – a decade.
Source: Feelgrafix
For about a decade, Turkish and Ghanaian organized crime rings operated a fake U.S. embassy in Ghana’s capital, where they issued fraudulently obtained legitimate and counterfeit visas and ID documents costing $6,000 to people from across West Africa.
That’s according to the U.S. State Department, which detailed how the operation worked.
“In Accra, Ghana, there was a building that flew an American flag every Monday, Tuesday and Friday, 7:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Inside hung a photo of President Barack Obama, and signs indicated that you were in the U.S. Embassy in Ghana,” reads an article from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Bureau. “However, you were not. This embassy was a sham.”
The “embassy” was shut down by Ghanaian authorities this summer, in cooperation with the real U.S. Embassy, following a tip from an informant. Authorities have arrested “several suspects” and confiscated “150 passports from 10 countries,” according to the article. They also discovered a fake Dutch embassy and continue to pursue “several” other suspects.
What gall. I’m sure its purpose was entirely dishonorable, and possibly even people were hurt.
But I can’t help but admire the balls and ingenuity.
