Regional Security Office Ghana Shuts Down Fake US Embassy | Hacker News Reader

Regional Security Office Ghana Shuts Down Fake US Embassy

state.gov

108 pointsprostoalex48 comments

This just in from the the State Department, Washington, DC.

"Successful interagency operations like this are an essential part of investigating and stopping the well-connected criminal networks perpetrating passport and visa fraud."

Nice to find out about such highly successful anti-corruption efforts where it only took 10 years to disable a vast conspiracy of "several suspects" who were arrested after nefariously deploying a massive network of high-tech equipment "that included a laptop computer; cell smart phones; 150 passports from 10 countries" and more, plus "an industrial sewing machine".

Very few law-enforcement agencies ever manage to apprehend any sewing machines at all.

Overcoming such a huge criminal enterprise certainly would not have been possible without every one of these powerful international investigative agencies on-the-job around-the-clock.

Fortunately only "Several suspects remain at large" and "this is only the beginning."

Excellent, in about 10 more years we should expect another criminal's laptop to be brought down.

I don't know what you expect. That the U.S. is going to police every nook and cranny of every country when there is rampant local corruption.

Oh, we are talking about minor crime here. This is not something like student with a joint that could murder a steak any time.

When I was traveling across Africa, I was told that thieves love the steal passports from US and UK Citizens since it was possible to be black and a citizen of those countries once the passport is doctored with a new photo. Much harder to pull off a photo of a black person with a German passport and German name. These passports were sold via operations like the one mentioned in the article.

The saddest part of the article is the local officials were bribed for a decade. Ten years.

I handed my wallet and (U.S.) passport to a guy in Ghana with an automatic rifle jammed in my neck. He took the cash and threw the passport on the ground, hah.

If you don't mind me asking, where in Ghana were you?

Somewhere maybe 40km south of Tamale towards Kintampo. We were on a bus headed south on the main road (Google Maps calls it N10).

I'm sure this information is quite verifiable on google and all..(just google from Tamale to Kintampo and bingo!!) but you're saying that an armed robber in Ghana points a gun at you, takes your cash and leaves your visa on the floor. Walks away.

Yep! Here is a slightly edited account of my memory of what happened (this was written a few weeks later):

---

I’m recreating this trip from an unimpressive map of Ghana and with little knowledge of the exact route we took, but I believe we were about 40km out of Tamale, near the small village of Kusawgu, when two men dressed in jungle fatigues appeared from the bush on the right side of the road and fired a few rounds from automatic weapons. I can’t recall where exactly they were aiming but I do feel like the guns were pointed pretty directly at the front of the bus. The driver yelled “Oh shit!” or something similar in French as he sank back into his seat and pulled the bus out of gear. From somewhere behind me I heard a woman yell “Il faut continuer!” (“Keep going!”) as the driver slowed and turned the bus to the shoulder of the road. As we slowed down a small tro-tro (taxi van) sped up quickly and managed to use our bus as sort of a shield to get by the gunmen (who did take a few shots in vain at the little bugger).

There were a few more shots and a loud noise outside the bus as one of the gunmen shot out the front right tire. He then came on the bus and tossed the bus worker who was sitting in front of the door out of the bus. The driver was yelling at us to get off and apparently this made the gunmen a little angry so he smacked him over the head a few times (nothing serious). For my part, I put my head down and had no intention of moving until someone with a gun told me too. Next, the gunmen who got on the bus turned to face the passengers, said something incomprehensible and fired a round inside the bus. The gunmen was standing right next to me so the shot gave my left ear quite a ringing and we later saw where the bullet landed, just over the seats where two people from our group were sitting. He then grabbed my shoulder and heaved me a little towards the door, which I took to mean that he wanted me to get off the bus.

When I got outside I saw the bus worker lying face down on the ground with his arms and legs spread. I felt this position looked a little awkward so for a moment I just kind of stood there. Then another volunteer from our group came out and got down on his knees and covered his head next to me so I followed his cue. A small aside here, as part of our safety and security training with Peace Corps we have been well informed of the general anatomy of a situation like this and something similar did in fact happen to a volunteer in Burkina a few months ago. Basically these men are highway robbers looking for money, they are not out to hurt anyone and the general rules for the persons being robbed are to do as they say and do not look them in the face.

Anyway, not long after I got off the bus I felt hands reach in to my back pockets to search for money (none was there). From here on out I can only really guess at what was happening because all I could see was the ground under me and a few people nearby. After a few minutes some more hands made their way in to my back pockets and once again came away empty. Finally, someone came around in front of me and lifted me up a little while something else poked me in the back of the neck (I assume a gun); I kept my eyes on the ground, took my wallet and passport from the front pocket of my shirt, handed it to him and went back into my covered position. He immediately threw the passport back down on the ground, took a few seconds to pull the cash out of my wallet (150,000cfa, about US$350) and then tossed the wallet with all its contents back at my hands. I was immediately rather relieved that he did not take my ID or passport as it saved me the trouble of replacing them.

Throughout this process there was some celebratory hooting and hollering (understandably, dudes were making bank with all of us nassara (foreigners)) and a few random gun shots here and there. At some point there were maybe 15 or 30 seconds of frenzied gun fire that were followed by single shots at close, seemingly equal intervals. I became a little worried thinking that maybe they were executing people, but I took the lack of any sort of other noise (screaming, body thud, etc) to indicate that this was not the case. I noticed the bus worker beside me start to sit up and look around a little and eventually turn on his back and sit down. I took this to mean the coast was clear so I slowly came up to look around and saw a Ghanaian police officer firing rounds in to the bush. I was quite relieved (and surprised) to see him there, I don’t think the whole ordeal lasted more than 10 minutes and that strikes me as a pretty good response time for the police. Taking the example of the volunteer that this happened to in Burkina, I believe he was held up for over half an hour (or more) and I don’t think the police came at all. [HN edit - I later spoke with this volunteer about his experience, he was in fact held up for a couple of hours and police never did come. In his case they took pretty much everything he had (he didn't have his passport at the time).]

Once everyone realized that the immediate danger was over people began looking around for their belongings while the police tried to get an idea of what happened and what was taken. At one point in this process an officer asked me how much was taken from me; after I told him, he added it to his list and remarked, and I quote, “Wow, they had a field day.” I found this pretty damn amusing. Anyway the first thing I found was my favorite dress shirt on the ground just outside the bus. I collected that and got back on the bus to look for my bag but found nothing near my seat. I then went back outside and found another small item of clothing (I think shorts) before I noticed my bag (the thermal bag that I love so dearly) crushed up against the windshield and empty. I was happy to find my bag but pretty bummed to think that everything inside had been taken (clothes, camera, ipod). To my surprise, however, I eventually found pretty much everything strewn about randomly in the first few rows of seats. Apparently the robbers were either completely uninterested in anything other than cash or simply didn’t have the time to get everything they wanted. Some other peoples’ bags remained untouched and for the most part everyone in our group still had some money (I was the only idiot who didn’t separate my money out in different places).

Within (impressively) five or 10 minutes there was an empty bus ready to take us all to the next large city on our trip south, Kintampo, while the driver and worker changed the shot-out tire on our bus. We got in to Kintampo pretty late in the evening so Peace Corps asked that we get a hotel there before continuing to the much larger city Kumasi (which has a Peace Corps “sub office”). We got rooms in a nice little hotel overlooking the bus station and this was where we got our first taste of the delicious “fried rice” dish that is a staple in Ghana. The dish includes, obviously, fried rice plus a little salad, a piece of fried chicken, some baked beans (!!) and occasionally a hard boiled egg. Needless to say we were all relieved to relax and have some good food after such a long day.

---

As a Ghanaian, this is a pretty odd story for multiple reasons.

I don't find that surprising by any means. It's out of context and a near stream of consciousness memory rant of the only time in my life anyone has ever pointed a gun at me (:

what a sheltered life you must lead.

Well, something is only valuable if you know how to sell it. The cash is easier to convert into local currency (if it isn't already) than the passport.

Startup trying to disrupt protected market; gets hit hard by authorities.

Like uber, they we're able to use a legal shell game to dance around the DS and Ghanaian plods. Their operations continue elsewhere.

> bought enough time for corrupt officials to arrange for bail for members

Sounds like an employer that looks after it's employees!

As a Turk I always knew that our criminals were good at creating fake stuff. But faking an EMBASSY for TEN YEARS? This is something beyond being good at something.

I find this article really discriminating towards Dutch people. Only people born in Holland can speak perfect English and Dutch so this was definitely a Dutch guy, maybe with Turkish passport because you cannot escape the Turkish government even after generations of living in another country when their grandfathers came to work in a factory, but nonetheless as Dutch as apple pie.
I have no idea why you Turks need to claim the fame while these guys clearly learned all the tricks from us. It's time you start respecting us.

you should try ours. It's better than yours.

My god. It's a joke. Relax.

When I saw that pic of that fake embassy I wondered how could a embassy look that shoddy. Then I thought maybe not all countries have posh and clean looking embassies. Then I see the pic of the real embassy on that page and it looks similar to what I have seen of most embassies - clean and elegant looks.

To be able to run this fake embassy in that shoddy building for a decade does take real something.

It's all relative... if that seems fine to those who go in then I guess it worked well enough!

I went to a US consulate in Bremen to renew my kid's passport. It was just two offices in a random office building. I was very surprised to see two US marines outside the office -- had I not seen them I would not have been surprised.

My own country (Australia) has some consulates in some remote locations which are basically no different from commercial offices. (on the other hand some are pretty fancy and of course offices are fancy). At times even the consulate in SF has been pretty bare bones.

My wife's country (Germany) seems to have the money for fancy consulates, at least all the ones we've needed to visit.

(I have to say going into a US consulate or embassy with issues relating to my US citizen child was quite different from visiting on my own or my wife's account -- non citizens are treated with great suspicion.)

Consulates are usually much less flashy than embassies. Embassies are for diplomacy between states, where status and protocol are important and there's a lot more staff, while consulates are for mundane stuff like visas and may not contain more than one actual diplomat (or, if honorary consulates, not even that).

UK has outsourced all visa application and interview work to a company named FRS, whose offices, offices for visa and application, representing the country, can be described no more than shoddy and downright a disgrace for the UK.

*Context: Was in one of their offices 2 weeks ago and embarrassed this was how my country was representing itself.

Indeed. This[1] is where I had to go for part of the UK immigration process. If I hadn't linked there from a gov.uk website I wouldn't have believed I was at the right place.

[1]: http://i.imgur.com/ns3560x.jpg

Thanks. Wow. That's really bad.

Flag and all, i wouldn't call it a "Fake US Embassy". With the high rate of Visa denials in countries like Nigeria,(and some other francophone West African countries) Ghana is a go to haven for all your visa issues. I'm quite sure most of these "victims" knew the kind of documentation they were going to get, just as long as it gets you through immigration. Scam might not be the word here, more like illegal travel facilitation.

Ballsy.

I can't help but have some level of grudging admiration for scammers so brazen.

A decade of operation...that takes dedication.

Don't get too impressed with scammers, they evidently maintained pretty chill hours:

"Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, 7:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m"

Sounds like better hours than many embassies and consular offices.

If they had't, it would have been entirely too obvious that the embassy was fake.

Roughly comparable to a real US Embassy:

American Citizen Services, Telephone: (03) 9526-5900 Monday to Thursday only 9:00am – 12:00noon

https://au.usembassy.gov/embassy-consulates/melbourne/u-s-ci...

To operate a fake US embassy, no less. Definitely badass.

Next they will doctor a fake "US Country" and then they will issue visas for it :) the poor souls who have never seen the US will feel they have come to the US :) Level 2 :)

It's kind of interesting that in order to issue recognized passports you need to have military control over some land somewhere. Why isn't it possible to vet people as citizens without that?

Palestinian passports are recognized in lots of places. And assorted governments in exile with control over zero territory issued widely-recognized passports throughout WWII.

States recognize whatever passports they want to; usually this is based on there being people with those passports that the state would like to be able to identify and authorize to enter, and usually you have to control territory to do that.

Several international organizations (the EU, UN, and Interpol) issue travel documents which can be recognized like passports even though they don't have military control over any territory.

People from American Samoa are US nationals but not US Citizens, and get a different US Passport[1]. Apparently the ILO issues travel documents, too although it is unclear how widely they are recognized[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_document#American_Samoa

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_document#UN_travel_docu..., http://www.icao.int/Meetings/TAG-MRTD/Documents/Tag-Mrtd-20/...

Scammers acting as if they were the IRS, scammers acting if they were the US Foreign Service...as much as people don't like the slogan of "Buy American" we surely have a world of scammers who think that is worth something.

The blockbuster hollywood movie watching kid and sad drone stat reading adult in me is wondering why all these people were not just killed years ago. Seems pretty serious to just be able to produce visas and fake/doctored passports.

I'd imagine the documents aren't worth anything since they don't correspond to any database entry. Just a way to scam people for fees.

It's not as though every border crossing in every country has instantaneous access to international passport registries. There are many, many places in the world where your docs only need to seem authentic to be useful.

They could also be useful as a privilege escalation on-ramp. Get these fakes, use them to gain genuinely issued, but lower status credentials (Bank account? SSN maybe?), then use that as leverage to go further up the chain.

I don't think forging fake documents is punished by death sentence even in the US, though.

"Just" killing people for fraud? I would only be okay with that if it was also applied to politicians who abuse public funds.

I wonder how far you can go with these fake documents. I imagine the internet makes it a bit harder

They might not work to cross the US border control but they might help you get into a third country.

They might not get you into the US but they might be adequate to get you into a third country or be useful to validate a legal contract or something like that.

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