Big Fraud at Novafone: Technician Arrested; CEO ‘Person of Interest’ in Sim Box Scam - See more at:
http://www.frontpageafricaonline.com/old/businesstech/marketfinance/7721-big-fraud-at-novafone-techn...“I can confirmed to you that Hussein Dakroub(pictured) was arrested, Friday and we are pressing charges. We are working in concert with the LTA and the Police to try and determine how much damage has been done. We are pressing charges and we lost a great deal of money; it is fraud, illegal and we will be pressing charges.” - Rebecca McKitterick, Chief Commercial Officer at Novafone
Monrovia – In what investigators are dubbing the biggest cellular technology fraud in recent memory for Liberia, Novafone, which recently replaced Comium as a cellular carrier, is pressing criminal charges against one of its own employees, Hussein Dakroub, a Lebanese national who is the company’s ISP Technical Supervisor for illegally operating a device that was stealing from Novafone, the Liberia Telecommunications Authority(LTA), the government of Liberia as well as rival carriers, Lonestarcell/MTN and Cellcom.
Investigators have also informed FrontPageAfrica that the company’s CEO Chady Salim is being considered a Person of Interest in the case and that more people may be involved in the scam.
Investigative source confided to FPA that Dakroub claimed to investigators that he received the device from Salim, the former CEO whose whereabouts are unknown. A source confided to FPA that Chady may currently be in neighboring Sierra Leone.
Novafone losing ‘Great Deal of Money’
The police source told FrontPageAfrica over the weekend that the theft is costing massive losses to the Liberia Telecommunications Authority and the other two major carriers, Cellcom and Lonestarcell. The source added that Novafone noticed the boxes missing a few months ago but never reported the matter to the LTA or authorities.
Rebecca McKitterick, Chief Commercial Officer at Novafone confirmed to FrontPageAfrica Sunday that Dakroub was in custody and the company is pressing charges: “I can confirmed to you that He(Hussein Dakroub) was arrested, Friday and we are pressing charges. We are working in concert with the LTA and the Police to try and determine how much damage has been done. We are pressing charges and we lost a great deal of money; it is fraud, illegal and we will be pressing charges.”
Device Illegal, LTA Says
Ms. Mariam Kaba, Acting Commissioner, International Gateway Management System at the LTA told FPA Sunday that the LTA is aware and monitoring the case. “I was there Friday and was on the ground when the perpetrator was arrested. We are trying to work with law enforcement to ensure that the perpetrator is not released because if he is released it will be a problem.”
Asked whether it is legal to possess the device in Liberia, Kaba said the Sim Boxes are illegal in Liberia. It is unclear how the box arrived on Novafone property.
The device known as Sim Boxes is not a new phenomenon, cellular companies across Africa are said to be losing millions in revenues due to call redirection, service inaccessibility and missing callbacks.
Cellular technology experts say the SIM Boxes remain a major problem for many network operators, having also negative effects on roaming hub providers and customers alike because they decrease operator revenues due to call redirection, service inaccessibility and missing callbacks. The quality is also said to decreases significantly when SIM Boxes redirect calls over inadequate, highly compressed IP connections, which results in image loss and dissatisfied customers.
Usually Results in Poor Quality Calls
Police investigators have informed FrontPageAfrica that the company’s CEO Chady Salim is being considered a Person of Interest in the case and that more people may be involved in the scam.
The device is reportedly hampering the quality of calls between subscribers and networks resulting in poor quality on calls to mobile phones at home or abroad.
Critics point to high interconnect fees as a key reason why fraudsters are engaging in the sim box fraud because some mobile operators are charging too much for connections from other networks and concentrating on offering cheap on-net calls instead - including free minutes, or in some countries, flat rate voice calls. As a result, some technology nerds are turning to the Sim boxes to bypass interconnect fees using devices called SIM boxes, or GSM gateways where two phones on different networks, are rigged so that a call arriving on one is routed out again on the other. To the networks involved - which can be mobile or fixed - each call appears to start and end on its own network, so no interconnect fee is payable.
The gateways are run by third-party carriers who sell their services on to mobile and fixed line operators, offering them connections to other networks for less than the usual interconnect fee. But experts say most of those service are poor quality because a large concentration of modems and SIM cards in one location, and the networks are not designed to handle such a load.
Meucci, a company based in Belgium detects SIM boxes using its own SIM-equipped probes which it connects to the various telcos in each country. These continually dial each other and measure the call quality to determine how the call was delivered.
Nigerians Nabbed in Similar Scam Recently
SIM boxes are legal in most, though not all countries. They are said to be legal in the UK for one's own use, but not for providing commercial services, for example - so they are really a business issue for the mobile operators which they can best deal with by cutting their interconnect rates to more realistic levels.
The device known as Sim Boxes is not a new phenomenon, cellular companies across Africa are said to be losing millions in revenues due to call redirection, service inaccessibility and missing callbacks.
Ironically, Dakroub was hired to curb such a practice at Novafone, a source told FrontPageAfrica. FrontPageAfrica has been informed that a few weeks ago, some Nigerians were arrested in Point Four recently in Monrovia.
Sim Boxes fraudsters have also hit neighboring countries like Ghana which recently took steps to curb the practice. The clampdown led to a Ghana anti fraud collaboration between the National Communications Authority (NCA), all telecom service providers in the country and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service which led to the arrest of a six-members SIM Box syndicate operating between Oregon in the United States of America and Accra, Ghana. Members of the syndicate had according to investigators, carried out the illegal termination of telephone calls also known as SIM box operations in the last seven months during which, it deprived telecom operators and the state revenue in the region of GH¢7.2 million about US $ 4.5m.
Comium Liberia relaunched under the ‘Novafone’ banner in July 2012 and immediately deployed a Dual Carrier (DC)-HSPA+ platform across its network, supporting theoretical downlink transmission speeds of up to 42Mbps, which it markets as ‘4G’. The company was targeting a 20% market share in the short-term, a feat many industry watchers say is a daunting task considering the massive inroads rivals Lonestarcell and Cellcom has already made on the market.
Comium Group has been on the downhill of late. Like Liberia, the company’s debt-laden operation in Cote d’Ivoire was put up for sale with India’s Bharti Airtel and Nigeria’s Globacom among the suitors. Speculations were rife recently that that Comium’s Sierra Leone subsidiary was raided by the authorities over unpaid debts, and its future hangs in the balance.
Novafone is reportedly said to be in a dogfight to make serious inroads in the Liberian market despite its massive publicity push since replacing Comium in September. It is unclear how the Sim Boxes scam will affect the company’s commercial appeal in its quest to make gains on rivals Lonestarcell/MTN and Cellcom.