Ghanaian authorities have extradited Fredrick ‘Abu Trica’ Kumi, a socialite fingered in a multimillion-dollar romance scam, to face trial in the U.S.
The 31-year-old, according to reports, was flown out of Ghana in the early hours of Thursday on a Delta Air Lines flight 157, a year after a federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment charging him and others with defrauding elderly victims of over $8 million.
His lawyer, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, in a post on X on Thursday, faulted Abu Trica’s extradition, noting that his case had yet to be decided by the court.
“The public press this morning reports that Mr Frederick Kumi was removed from this jurisdiction earlier today, aboard Delta Air Lines flight 157, an aircraft that departed at sixteen minutes past nine o’clock,” Mr Barker-Vormawor said.
The lawyer argued that “If a man may be placed upon an aircraft while his case is being called, and this court cannot answer for it, what is the point of justice?”
In a follow-up post, Mr Barker-Vormawor said, “We have made a mockery of this justice system. We removed a chief justice in vain; if we intended things to stay the same.”
Abu Trica’s extradition comes a week after an Accra High Court last Thursday dismissed an application to block his extradition.
Abu Trica’s lawyers had, in May, approached the court seeking to quash a ruling by the Gbese District Court authorising the Ghanaian fraudster’s extradition.
Though the Accra High Court ruling cleared the way for Abu Trica’s extradition to the U.S. to face trial over his involvement in a romance scam, he could file an appeal within the legal window seeking to block his extradition to the Supreme Court.