When a woman, Rose Amponsah received a Facebook message from renowned Prophet TB Joshua, the founder and leader of the Synagogue Church of all nations (SCOAN), she had no question that she was dealing with the revered prophet.
After telling the prophet about her problems over several Facebook messages, she did not hesitate for a second when she was instructed by the prophet to send an amount of GHc200 to an MTN number via mobile money for a phial of the prophet’s morning water.
A week passed, a month passed and she heard nothing again. After several attempts by her to retrieve her money proved futile, she phoned the church directly only to find that the Facebook profile she had been dealing with was a fake account. A fraudster had set it up to extort money from innocent people.
A search across social media platforms has revealed that the fraudsters are now targeting member and followers of big churches in Africa.
Some target churches include those of Prophet TB Joshua, Archbishop Williams, and Pastor Chris Oyakkhilome, Pastor E.A Adeboye and others.
The fraudsters set up very convincing social media profiles so that their victims (innocent followers of the pastors) would not think twice if they are asked to follow any (dubious) directions given them by the account holders.
The invention of social media was great but no matter how useful it is, some people will have their own ways of making it look bad and these fake account creators are no exception.
For sharing and spreading information, for doing business and other important activities, the fact that social media is also a very thriving avenue for criminals cannot be ruled out.
Aside from spreading falsehoods about people, luring people into committing all kinds of crimes, fraudsters are also using the avenue to create multiple accounts of personalities including pastors to dupe people.
One victim, I spoke with, Favour Adziator who is a petty trader said she was in dire need of spiritual help for her sick daughter.
She said her 19-year-old daughter returned from the boarding school with a strange illness which got her paralysed.
"Although I didn't have much money, I couldn't watch my young daughter die like that”. I spent the little money I had on her as I am a single parent," Favour narrated.
She posted pictures of her daughter on Facebook and asked people to remember her in prayers.
"A day after, I got several messages from people wishing my daughter well and among the messages was one from Pastor Adeboye, the General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God and I was glad to hear from him."
She said the account holder asked her to send her consultation fee to a Mobile money account so that a counselling date could be booked for her and her daughter to see if Pastor Adeboye could help heal her daughter.
"I borrowed 300 cedis from a friend as I thought this was a last chance to get my daughter healed," she indicated.
She also heard nothing from the account user after she sent the money and her daughter died some few weeks after.
So who is to blame?
This woman had no more money to spend on her sick daughter and she borrowed from someone only for a social media fraudster to take advantage of her.
She could have used that money to buy drugs to sustain her daughter a little longer but for the wicked fraudster's ways, her daughter died.
Trust me anyone can fall for it because the accounts are run with all seriousness. Of course, they (the fraudsters) would not take it for granted...that is their business, what fetches them money so they do it well.
And people who are in dire need of spiritual help easily fall for these tricks because the last thing they think of is the fact that the person they are dealing with is fake.
For instance on the professional networking site, Linkedin, Prophet TB Joshua alone has close to 200 profiles, there are more than ten @Pastorchrislive accounts on Instagram and a couple of accounts for many other renowned African pastors.
Another man, Dominic Okocha, a Nigerian was coming to Ghana and wanted to see Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams, Founder and leader of Action Chapel. In this social media-friendly era, he decided to send him a direct message on Twitter prior to his journey.
The message read 'Hello man of God please I hope you and your family are doing great. Please, I have a problem and a friend recommended you to me for spiritual assistance. My containers have been seized at the port and I need some spiritual help to clear them.'
He said he was told to send photocopies of the documents of the containers to the account so that the Archbishop could pray over it for him.
He sent the pictures and the fraudsters nearly cleared the goods if not for one agent who notified him about what was about to happen.
He traced the fraudster for several weeks but unfortunately he could not get the person arrested.
'I actually made my sister lure him to a place but he was smarter so I could not get him arrested,' aggrieved Okocha told me.
Okocha could have lost his containers full of goods to this fraudster if not for the help of God.
Now we cannot tell the fraudsters to stop neither can we arrest or block them so what is the way forward?
I think it is up to the churches to advise their members of this threat on social media and take steps to prevent more people from getting duped.
And the earlier they act, the more people they will save because I know even as I sit behind my PC and type this article, someone is duping an innocent person in the name of a pastor.

Hmmmm