It is not unusual for goods to be sold at surprisingly low prices. Sometimes, the reason is quite innocent. A person may need money urgently and be prepared to let go of an item for much less than its ordinary value. There may be other perfectly legitimate reasons for a bargain.
At other times, however, there may be more to the transaction. The low price may be attractive precisely because the item was stolen or otherwise obtained through crime.
The recent police investigation into the death of 33-year-old Nana Yaw Kyere has brought this question to the fore. The Police say that Mr. Kyere’s iPhone 12 was retrieved during investigations and that one of the suspects allegedly sold the phone for GH¢100. The reported buyer, Sunday Omeje, has been cautioned and detained for suspected dishonestly receiving the phone.
The murder investigation itself will take its course. But the allegation concerning the sale and purchase of the iPhone raises a question capable of standing on its own. When does a person who buys property that turns out to have been stolen become criminally liable for dishonestly receiving it?
The law on Dishonestly Receiving
Sections 146 and 147 of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) deal with dishonest receiving.
Section 146 provides that a person who dishonestly receives property which he knows to have been obtained or appropriated by an offence is liable to the same punishment as if he had committed that offence. Section 147 explains what constitutes dishonest receiving. A person is guilty where, knowing that property has been obtained or appropriated by crime, he receives it, buys it, or assists in its disposal, otherwise than with a purpose to restore it to the owner.
The offence therefore does not arise merely because a person happens to have property that was stolen. There must be receipt, purchase or assistance in its disposal, coupled with the knowledge required by the law and a dishonest purpose.
What Must the Prosecution Prove?
The Court of Appeal in the case of Rahim Ibrahim v The Republic; Unreported, Criminal Appeal No. H2/2/201 (delivered on 19th July, 2017) stated the essential ingredients of the offence. The prosecution must prove that the accused received property which he knew had been obtained or appropriated by crime and that the receipt was dishonest. The court emphasised that proving that the accused received stolen property is not, by itself, enough. The prosecution must also establish guilty knowledge.
These requirements can be understood through the different parts of the transaction.
First, there must be property which has been obtained or appropriated by crime. The property may have been stolen or obtained through another criminal offence contemplated by the statute.
Second, the accused must have received, bought or assisted in disposing of the property. The law does not limit the offence to a person who physically takes an item from another’s hands. What matters is that the accused obtained possession or control of the property. The courts have recognised actual or constructive possession in considering this element.
Third, and crucially, the accused must have known that the property had been obtained or appropriated by crime. This is the guilty knowledge which makes the receipt criminal.
Finally, the receipt must have been dishonest. Section 147 itself makes clear that the transaction must have been undertaken otherwise than with a purpose of restoring the property to its owner.
Proving Guilty Knowledge
There is an old legal saying that ‘not even the devil knows the intention of man’. The point is simple enough. A person’s state of mind is not something a court can ordinarily see or touch. A buyer is unlikely to announce, when receiving a stolen phone, that he knows it has been stolen. The court therefore has to determine what the accused knew from the circumstances surrounding the transaction.
In Rahim Ibrahim, the Court of Appeal considered the circumstances in which the property was sold and bought, as well as the price at which it was bought, in determining whether the accused knew that the property had been dishonestly appropriated. The relevant test is concerned with the accused’s state of mind at the time of receiving the property.
The price paid can therefore be significant evidence.If an item ordinarily worth a substantial amount is offered for a fraction of its value, the circumstances may call for an explanation. A very low price may, together with other circumstances, support an inference that the buyer knew or suspected that something was wrong with the transaction. But the law does not say that every person who gets an unusually cheap bargain must have known that the property was stolen.
The case of The Republic v Collins Adom & Another 2025 GHADC 256 (16 May 2025) provides a useful illustration.
The second accused was alleged to have bought a motor tricycle from the first accused for GH¢5,000. The complainant had acquired the tricycle for about GH¢24,000. Even the GH¢5,000 was not paid in full. The second accused paid GH¢4,600 and withheld the remaining GH¢400 until the first accused produced the documents covering the tricycle.
On the face of it, the difference between the apparent value of the tricycle and the price at which it was sold could have raised serious questions about the transaction. Yet the District Court, applying the principles in Rahim Ibrahim, found that the prosecution had not established the second accused’s guilty knowledge. The court considered his insistence on the documents and the absence of evidence establishing that GH¢5,000 was an abnormally low market price for the used tricycle. The second accused was accordingly acquitted and discharged.
The case shows why the price of an item cannot be viewed in isolation. A very low price may be significant, but the court must still ask what that price, together with the other circumstances of the transaction, says about what the buyer actually knew.
The courts have reached a different conclusion where the surrounding circumstances provide stronger evidence of knowledge. In Republic v Yakubu Danla [2024] DARYDC 7D11, for example, the accused received a stolen phone on the same day it was stolen, immediately swapped it for another phone, and was found to have advised the person who gave him the phone to destroy the complainant’s SIM card to avoid being traced. The court treated the circumstances and his conduct as inconsistent with innocence and convicted him of dishonestly receiving.
What does this mean for the GH¢100 iPhone?
The reported sale of the iPhone 12 for GH¢100 naturally raises questions. The price may be relevant evidence if the matter eventually comes before a court. But the fact that the phone was sold for GH¢100 cannot, standing alone, establish the offence.
The prosecution would still have to prove that the buyer received or bought the phone knowing that it had been obtained or appropriated by crime and that his receipt of it was dishonest.
That may require evidence about the circumstances in which the phone was offered to him, what he was told about the phone, the identity and conduct of the seller, the condition of the phone, the circumstances of the payment and delivery, and any conduct of the buyer which may shed light on what he knew when he acquired it.
So the law on dishonestly receiving is more exacting than the simple proposition that “buying stolen property is a crime.” A person may buy property which turns out to have been stolen without having the guilty knowledge necessary for a conviction. Another person, faced with the same kind of property, may be unable to explain circumstances which strongly point to his knowledge of its criminal origin.
The difference lies in what the prosecution can prove about the buyer’s state of mind when he received the property.
