Apparently it has not gone unnoticed to police in Ghana that the country has become world infamous for internet scams. Since a few weeks now internet cafes in the areas named explicitly as homebase of large numbers of internet scams (Christian Village, Tema, Berekum) have been targeted by police raids. According to frequent users of cafes in these areas, "the atmosphere has changed dramatically" and police picks up young men from internet cafes but even from the streets in Christian Village. They are brought to the police station for alleged crimes (?). And as so often in Ghana it is difficult to distinguish who are the worst criminals, the scammers or the police. It seems that the police has now just become aware that some youngsters in those places are sponsored with foreign money and they just want to take their share. Accused (whoever is young and looks affluent enough) are held without charges (what law have they broken?) and are released only against high bribes. Corruption is rampant.
And as so often, they are not really doing anything against the phenomenon itself, because whoever pays off the corrupt officers, can just leave without charges and return back to do whatever activity they were accused of.
The only difference between armed robbers and the police in Ghana is that the police is wearing uniforms; their activities and intentions are the same: use the threat of force to extort money from whoever they happen to get in their power. Police officers from Achimota, Madina and Dome police stations have discovered Christian Village as a good hunting grounds for bribes and extortion. The poor are an easy target as usual. Now they even want to set up a new police station at Christian Village near the Golf course.
This practice does not decrease the occurrence of cyber crime, but only increases the police pressure on Gay Ghanaians who now not only have the threat of police persecution for being gay but also their persecution for being internet users.