Sierra Leone gets together with International Telecommunications Union to fight Phone Scam Crime


Sierra Leone's National Telecommunications Commission (NATCOM) has issued a statement on the so-called "Wangiri Scam" calls. The press release, signed by Abdul Ben-Foday, director of corporate and industry affairs at the National Telecommunications Commission in Freetown, reads in full:

The attention of the National Telecommunications Communications (NATCOM) has been drawn to a series of criminal activities carried  out by scammers using the 232-21 Code to perpetrate their criminal activities.

The Commission is informed that certain persons in the USA have been receiving scam calls purportedly coming from Sierra Leone, and the said criminal syndicate known as 'WANGIRI or One Ring' has been reported through various news channels and tabloids. This has the propensity of affecting the country's image internationally.

Being deeply concerned by this development, the Commission wishes  to assure the government and the people of the USA and other relevant bodies that it has already engaged the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for it to expunge the said 232-21 national destination code (NTC) from its  database, and that on the domestic front, the Commission and law enforcement agencies have commenced immediate investigations not only into this particular matter but other reports by persons in Sierra Leone of similar international scam calls received by them with 42, 243 country codes.

In the meantime, mobile phone subscribers are hereby admonished not to call back strange numbers, as the Commission fully assurers all of  its commitment to get at the bottom of these issues and addressing them accordingly.

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