The Man Who Conned the World

At the hotel, Rigby took in the client, in the flesh. John Ackah Blay-Miezah was bare-chested, with a large gold Star of David hanging from a gold chain around his neck. He sat on one of the three sofas in the lounge of his suite, smoking an expensive cigar. Blay-Miezah said that his company needed to rent several pieces of video equipment and would pay handsomely. Rigby did not realize it, but that meeting was about to change his life forever. His new client was one of the greatest con artists of all time.

This article is adapted from Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo (Bloomsbury Publishing, 400 pp., $29.99, August 2023).

By 1981, Blay-Miezah had been scamming his way around West Africa and the United States for years, leaving a trail of angry diplomats, hotel managers, and investigators in his wake. Less than a decade earlier, he had turned a combination of half-remembered news bulletins, propaganda, and prison-yard gossip into one of the most lucrative cons of the 20th century: the Oman Ghana Trust Fund.

As Blay-Miezah told it, the fund was the best-kept secret in the history of Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first president, had revealed it to him on his deathbed in 1972.

Nkrumah had dedicated his life to freeing Ghana from British colonial rule. While outwardly supportive of independence, the British had sabotaged him relentlessly. Informants reported his every move to the security services. Officials tried to rewrite history, whitewashing centuries of looting and exploitation. When Nkrumah planned a speech to set the record straight—with, a panicked intelligence officer wrote in a top-secret memo, “two whole pages which dealt with such items as the slave trade and were in remarkably poor taste”—officials were so alarmed that the British governor was woken up in the middle of the night. Yet in spite of it all, in March 1957, Ghana had won independence.

“At long last, the battle has ended!” Nkrumah told a cheering crowd in Accra. “And thus Ghana, your beloved country, is free forever.”

The early days of independence were like a gigantic cocktail party. There were grand balls in the State House, where Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, and Oliver Tambo danced and drank far into the night with W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Bunche, and Martin Luther King Jr. But Nkrumah’s Ghana was fragile. From the moment independence was declared, it was under attack. Con men, war criminals, and spies from all over the world flocked to the country, looking to hide out or make a killing.

Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah (center) waves to a celebrating crowd in Accra on March 6, 1957, after the British colony known as the Gold Coast ceased to exist and the sovereign state of Ghana came into being. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Nkrumah’s government built the Akosombo Dam, an enormous hydroelectric power plant on the River Volta. It built an aluminum smelter, a harbor, an industrial area and a brand-new city at Tema, sugar refineries, textile plants, railways, glass factories, printworks and presses, hotels, universities and hospitals, and schools across the country. This was often a dirty business. Each project presented an opportunity for graft. Nkrumah himself lived simply and did not take bribes. But that did not matter. Corrupt businessmen descended on his ministers with envelopes full of cash. While many indignantly refused the money, some, inevitably, succumbed.

Western countries went out of their way to support the crooks who were looting Ghana—and to avoid supporting Nkrumah. “Intensive efforts,” ran a U.S. memo, “should be made through psychological warfare and other means to diminish support for Nkrumah within Ghana.” In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on his way to China, members of the military and police staged a coup d’état. Nkrumah would spend the rest of his life in exile, and the country’s hopes for a bright future would be swallowed up by lies, greed, and violence.

Years later, Nkrumah was dying of cancer in Romania. His former friends and allies had abandoned him. As Blay-Miezah told it, this was when the president revealed that Ghana’s history had a secret chapter. There was only one person left in the world he could count on: Blay-Miezah himself. Before he died, Nkrumah had revealed to Blay-Miezah his deepest secret.

Over his years in power, Blay-Miezah said, Nkrumah had hidden away enormous amounts of cash and gold. At that very moment, tens of thousands of gold bars were sitting in vaults in Switzerland. But Nkrumah was not a thief. He was a visionary. He hid the gold to make sure it did not fall into the wrong hands. When the time was right, it would be handed back to Ghanaians.

Nkrumah had known that he could lose power at any moment, Blay-Miezah continued. So he made a plan. Slowly, carefully, quietly, he had moved some of Ghana’s gold reserves abroad. Then he placed the gold under the control of a trust: the Oman Ghana Trust Fund. Most of the money, Blay-Miezah said, was to develop Ghana. The rest? Well, as the sole trustee, Blay-Miezah could do what he liked with that.

But, Blay-Miezah would say, there was a catch: Before the banks would release the money, Blay-Miezah had to show that he had met all the conditions Nkrumah set up to govern the trust fund. And for that, he needed funding.

So Blay-Miezah wanted to make a deal. Anyone who helped him return the gold to the people of Ghana would earn $10 for every $1 they put in. They’d get their money back in months—maybe weeks, guaranteed. “Whatever I promise,” Blay-Miezah told them, “I will deliver.” He had charmed wealthy businessmen in America, radical Episcopalian priests, industrialists in Ghana, and anyone else who would listen and had money to spare.

Sometimes, Blay-Miezah would produce yellowed documents, embossed with the seal of the Office of the Prime Minister, Osu Castle, Accra, that were seemingly signed by Nkrumah himself: the deeds to the Oman Ghana Trust Fund. Blay-Miezah claimed that the trust controlled $27 billion in cash and diamonds and 30,000 gold bars.

Blay-Miezah was not just selling an investment, he was selling a dream. To Black people, he was selling liberation: a chance to repair the wounds of colonialism. To everyone else, he was selling the chance to loot an African country’s ancestral wealth—which is to say, he was selling colonialism.

In truth, while Nkrumah was on his deathbed in 1972, Blay-Miezah was not at his side. He was half a world away, serving a one- to two-year sentence for charges including “defrauding an innkeeper” at Graterford State Correctional Institute in Pennsylvania.

A linguist staff from the 19th century, which would have been carried by high-ranking Akan officials in the Gold Coast or Ghana, depicts Anansi. Metropolitan Museum of Art/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

When Ghanaian children are young, their parents often tell them stories about Anansi. Sometimes a man and sometimes a spider, Anansi is a trickster. He is wise, but also greedy and lazy. He uses stories to deceive, or cheat, or steal from someone bigger or stronger than him.

As the legends have it, Anansi knew the power of stories—and his stories were so good, they changed the world. If he told a story about a mountain, the next morning people would look outside and see the mountain. If he told a story about some hidden treasure, people would dive to the bottom of the sea in search of it. If he told a story about being a king, people would bring him a crown.

Anansi’s stories made people feel special: like they knew a great secret or were part of an amazing adventure. Sometimes he got away with his cons. More often, he got greedy. And because, in Ghana, Anansi stories are used to teach children not to be like Anansi, he would often fall into one of his own traps. There would be consequences, and Anansi would be humiliated. But after that, Anansi’s stories wouldn’t go away. The mountain would still be there. People would keep searching for the treasure. Anansi would still be remembered as a king.

John Ackah Blay-Miezah was Anansi. His story of Nkrumah’s secret fortune rewrote Ghana’s history and made him fabulously rich. Then it destroyed him. But the story outlived Blay-Miezah. Decades after his death, people are still telling his story and are still hunting for Nkrumah’s gold.

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Investors and associates gather in the London office of the Oman Ghana Trust Fund in the 1980s.

Rigby learned about Blay-Miezah from his associates, who had begun to filter into London in Blay-Miezah’s wake. Many were former Ghanaian government ministers, including Kwesi Amoako-Atta, who had been minister of finance under Nkrumah, and Ebenezer Ako-Adjei, one of Ghana’s founding fathers, who had been minister of foreign affairs. They told Rigby that Blay-Miezah had recently run for president of Ghana on an anti-corruption platform but had been jailed before the election. (This was true—but Blay-Miezah’s friends did not mention that he had been convicted of bribery, perjury, and forgery, in a trial that dominated Ghana’s newspapers for weeks.) After the election, his friends managed to convince the government to let Blay-Miezah out of jail and let him leave for London.

Rigby had an appetite for risk and a strong sense of adventure. When he heard about the Oman Ghana Trust Fund, he wanted to come along for the ride. In exchange, Blay-Miezah offered Rigby an opportunity. When it was all over, Blay-Miezah promised that Rigby would found Ghana’s first commercial television network. That was how Rigby was going to get rich.

Rigby would spend over a decade at Blay-Miezah’s side. One day, he would be shooting video in London and the next, Rigby said, he would be running cash and weapons into Ghana. His faith was unwavering. “Most people seem to think Blay-Miezah was the world’s biggest con man,” Rigby later said. “He wasn’t. He was a patriot.”

Children play around the fallen statue of Nkrumah in Accra, Ghana, on Feb. 28, 1966.Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Something always came up. Someone had died. There had been some unrest. The bankers had balked. The government of Ghana had withdrawn its support. A new company had to be incorporated. The Americans had interfered. But not to worry, the investors were told: Next time, the money would be released. All they needed was one last push.

On Dec. 24, 1981, Rigby was throwing a Christmas party at his flat in Hoxton. Close to midnight, he got a call from Blay-Miezah himself. Rigby was to be at the Montcalm Hotel at four in the morning, on Christmas Day, to accompany Blay-Miezah to Accra. The next morning, a very hungover and sleep-deprived Rigby went to Heathrow Airport with Blay-Miezah and an elderly American lawyer he had never met before named Charles Lowenthal. They arrived in Accra in the evening. Rigby wondered about the mad dash to get there. Days passed, and nothing happened.

On Dec. 30, Rigby and Lowenthal were having breakfast in the restaurant of the Ringway Hotel, in the heart of Accra. As the two men waited for Blay-Miezah to summon them, the double doors leading to the restaurant swung open. A short, lean man strode in and walked past them, sitting at a table behind Lowenthal. After he sat down, Lowenthal leaned toward Rigby and asked if he had gotten a good look at the man. Rigby looked past Lowenthal to the man again, and the man caught Rigby’s look. He leaned over and cordially asked why they were in Ghana.

Rigby said something innocuous about visiting friends. Lowenthal made a face, turned to the man, and, in a booming voice, said, “We’re here selling guns.” Rigby had no idea whether or not he was joking, but he was horrified.

Just then, Blay-Miezah’s driver came through the double doors. Rigby left immediately, but Lowenthal stayed behind. Rigby was more than happy to leave him with the man. It was 20 minutes before Lowenthal joined him in the car.

It was a quiet drive to Blay-Miezah’s house. At one point, Lowenthal leaned in and said, in a conspiratorial tone, that he was going to leave Accra that night. If Rigby had any sense, he would join him. Lowenthal had clearly heard a rumor that something was about to happen. There was a KLM flight to Amsterdam that evening, and Rigby had a friend there.

As Rigby and Lowenthal were leaving Blay-Miezah’s house at about seven that evening, a truck arrived loaded with what looked like freshly printed leaflets. It seemed that someone was making a big announcement.

As Rigby settled into his seat on the KLM flight, he didn’t know that it would be the last one to leave Kotoka International Airport for weeks.

President of Ghana Jerry John Rawlings on Feb. 1, 1985. William F. Campbell/Getty Images

When Rigby landed in Amsterdam, he went to his friend’s houseboat on Prinsengracht and settled in to sleep off the red-eye. As he dozed off, he heard a news report on the radio. In the early hours of the morning, there had been a military coup d’état in Ghana.

Later that day, as Rigby was watching television, the screen filled with a picture of a man Rigby instantly recognized. It was the man who had strode into the restaurant of the Ringway Hotel the day before. He was Flight Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, the news reporter said. He had just overthrown the democratically elected government of Ghana.

The borders were closed, Rawlings announced. If any other nation tried to interfere, he said, “West Africa would burn.”

What was bad news for Ghana was good news for Blay-Miezah. In Rawlings’s regime, he saw an opportunity. In May 1982, Ghana’s new government issued Blay-Miezah with a diplomatic passport. It was a handsome red document. Blay-Miezah’s profession was listed as “Government Official.” His date of birth was given as 1924, rather than 1941. In his photograph, he posed in front of some flock wallpaper, wearing a checked suit, a striped tie, and a look of ineffable delight. Blay-Miezah had promised Rawlings and his junta that, with their help, he could bring home Nkrumah’s gold.

Blay-Miezah’s diplomatic passport.

In 1974, he had sat before Col. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, then the country’s head of state. Blay-Miezah wore polished loafers and a crisp white leisure suit. Acheampong listened to him unfurl his story about Nkrumah’s millions, wondering whether he was listening to a fantasist or a con man.

To Acheampong, Blay-Miezah’s story had sounded absurd. But at the time, Ghana was broke. Blay-Miezah’s millions would fill the country’s coffers again. With that kind of money, Acheampong could make Ghana the envy of the world. He told Blay-Miezah that if the money existed, he should bring it home.

There were, Blay-Miezah said, just two things he needed from the colonel. He needed a diplomatic passport. Also, he would be very grateful if Acheampong would let him out of jail.

At the time, Blay-Miezah had been resident at Ussher Fort, the most notorious prison in Accra. He had been charged with fraud, escaped police custody via a latrine, then had been locked up again. Outside Acheampong’s office, guards were waiting to escort him back to jail.

Blay-Miezah walked out a free man.

Left: A letter allegedly written by Kwesi Botchwey, Ghana’s minister of finance, regarding the Oman Ghana Trust Fund. Right: The alleged deed to the Oman Ghana Trust Fund.

Soon, Blay-Miezah was brandishing letters on official government stationery, apparently signed by Kwesi Botchwey, Ghana’s minister of finance. One stated that “the Oman Ghana Fund originated partly from Ghana and partly from contributions by financial institutions in Europe and North America.” For Blay-Miezah’s investors, it was all the confirmation they needed that Nkrumah’s gold was really out there. The Oman Ghana Trust Fund kept getting bigger.

Many investors spent years following Blay-Miezah around the world, hoping that the money would arrive. Whenever any of them rebelled, they would receive a call, promising that the money would arrive soon, from John Mitchell, former U.S. attorney general in the Nixon administration, who had gone to work for the Oman Ghana Trust Fund.

For years, it seemed like the Oman Ghana Trust Fund was too big to fail. But Blay-Miezah’s lies finally caught up with him in 1989, when Rawlings cancelled his diplomatic passport and ordered him back to Accra.

After he heard the news, Blay-Miezah called Rigby into his dining room in London. He looked up from his meal and asked: “What do you think I should do?” It took Rigby a moment to recover from the shock of being asked for advice.

Rigby told Blay-Miezah to go back to Ghana and prove the doubters wrong.

Blay-Miezah flew to Accra on a Ghana Airways flight on Jan. 29, 1989. Rigby went to Heathrow to see him off. At the airport, Blay-Miezah seemed ebullient. He assured everyone that he would be back in just two weeks.

Later that day, CBS broadcast an episode of 60 Minutes about Blay-Miezah and the Oman Ghana Trust Fund. The presenter, Ed Bradley, had been introduced to Blay-Miezah by one of his investors, Dick Butera. Blay-Miezah had hoped that the program would be a glossy advertisement for the trust fund. Instead, Bradley called Blay-Miezah “the ultimate con man.” When Blay-Miezah landed in Accra, he was immediately put under house arrest. Many of his strongest supporters had died or were backing away from him. Rawlings was increasingly focused on laundering his reputation, and Blay-Miezah had embarrassed him too many times. 60 Minutes was the last straw: Blay-Miezah was now a liability. He died, still under house arrest, three years later, in 1992.

Today, Rigby still believes in the Oman Ghana Trust Fund. He still has the promissory note Blay-Miezah gave him. He knows that it’s not really worth anything, but he’s adamant that Blay-Miezah failed simply because the time wasn’t right.

The Oman Ghana Trust Fund did not die with Blay-Miezah. Soon after his death, one of his investors, Gregory Frazier of Detroit, Michigan, bought a one-way ticket to Accra. He announced that he had formed the Friends of the Oman Ghana Trust Fund, and he spent years trying to convince successive Ghanaian governments to help him claim the money.

In 2009, the Friends of the Oman Ghana Trust Fund successfully petitioned the Ghanaian government to look into the trust fund. The commission formed to investigate it found no evidence that the trust fund existed. That didn’t stop people asking the next administration, and the next.

For a few years, Kobla Asamani, a Ghanaian supporter of Frazier, was the spokesman for the Friends of the Oman Ghana Trust Fund. One evening in April 2017, Asamani sat on the veranda in the lush grounds of a boarding school in Accra’s industrial area. “The task of retrieving the money was originally given to John Ackah Blay-Miezah,” Asamani said. “But he got corrupt, he conned people, he tarnished the whole process. Greg Frazier knew him personally, and was at his deathbed, and Blay-Miezah passed the secret on to him. And at the appointed time he will retrieve the money.”

A golden statue of Nkrumah stands outside the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on March 18, 2013. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

According to Blay-Miezah, Nkrumah stole more gold than everyone else put together. More than the Portuguese, or the Danes, or the Dutch, or the British. Suddenly, all of them were off the hook. Blay-Miezah told Ghanaians that their country was ruled by thieves, and it always would be. It was a racist lie.

Blay-Miezah, with his cigars and his suits, was a perfect instrument of misdirection: As long as all eyes were on him, and everyone was paying attention to the tale of Nkrumah’s gold, they were less likely to notice the ways in which Ghana was being robbed blind, sometimes by some of Blay-Miezah’s most powerful supporters.

The story of the Oman Ghana Trust Fund lives on because, like all myths, it explains the world. For generations, people have wondered how a resource-rich country like Ghana could be so poor. The real answer—that for centuries it was a mine that other countries used to get rich—is abstract and hard to look straight at.

What happened to Ghana? Blay-Miezah had an easy answer: The man who founded the country hid its wealth away. Blay-Miezah also had a solution: Trust him, and he would get Ghana’s gold back, and kick something your way in the process. You could save the world and get rich along the way. Who would say no to that?

Adapted from Anansi’S Gold by Yepoka Yeebo, © 2023 by Yepoka Yeebo, published by Bloomsbury on Aug. 1, 2023.