The Mthatha Serious Commercial
Crimes Court has convicted and sentenced Bongumusa Sibeko (50) for charges of theft.
This follows a trail of fraudulent
activities that happened as a result of what was thought to be a faulty
cellphone sim card of a complainant.
According to Hawks spokesperson,
Yolisa Mgolodela, on June 14, 2022, the victim of the fraud noticed her phone
to have lost signal and reported the matter to the service provide, MTN, with
the intention to procure a new sim card.
“The complainant arrived at a
local MTN office to be told that the sim card in question is actually active in
another handset. Nevertheless, sim swap was done on her cellphone but there was
still no network,” Mgolodela explained.
A month after the complainant’s
loss of network coverage, she went to Standard Bank ATM to withdraw money, only
to realise that her balance did not tally with the previous balance she left in
her account.
“She then retrieved the bank
statement and noticed numerous transactions done in her account without her
knowledge. The money was transferred to various accounts unknown to her”, Mgolodela said.
The matter was reported to
Mthatha Serious Commercial Crime Investigation team for further probing.
This yielded results as it saw
the arrest of a suspect being arrested on March 10, in Gauteng.
“The suspect appeared at the Palm
Ridge Court on March 10, transferred to Mthatha Serious Commercial Crimes Court
and made his appearance on March 14, where he was released on R2000 bail. The
case was remanded to March 31.”
The investigations revealed that
the victim was prejudiced cash to the value of more than R179 000.
Mgolodela further added that on March 31, 2022, Sibeko pleaded
guilty on a count of theft and was convicted and sentenced 4 years direct
imprisonment.
The Provincial Head Major General
Mboiki Obed Ngwenya once more gave a thumbs up to the team for their laborious
effort in fighting Commercial Crime.
