BANK STAFF, CLOSE RELATIVES AND TRADITIONAL HEALER UP FOR THEFT OF MILLIONS

BANK STAFF, CLOSE RELATIVES AND TRADITIONAL HEALER UP FOR THEFT OF MILLIONS

BY BRIAN KAJENGO

Nelspruit - The South African Police Service’s War Room Tracking Team, working together with the ABSA Barclays Africa Security’s Division of Serious and Violent Crime Investigation and Information, apprehended seven suspects for stealing over R4 million from 17 ABSA Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).

The mastermind behind the theft is a 30-year-old man employed by the bank as a Custodian. He colluded with the bank’s contracted cleaner, also 30-years-old, to steal from the bank by flouting the prescripts and regulations of the bank for loading money into the ATM’s. The bank’s management became suspicious when most of the ATMs in Nelspruit Central Business District ran out of money on 29 March 2014.

Initial investigations by the bank’s team led to one of their custodians who had apparently started acting suspicious during the week of 24 to 29 March 2014, and never reported for duty from the 29^th.

The team detected that on 27 and 28 March 2014, he had accessed ATMs that he not supposed to and that he also changed the access code combinations to those ATMs. The custodian and the cleaner further caught on one of the Close Circuit Television cameras of the ATMs walking out with packed SBV cash bag.

With good working relations between the banks and the police, the bank’s investigators, armed with this chain of evidence, contacted the Tracking Team and Nelspruit Detectives to trace the suspects. They received information that the suspects were travelling from Nelspruit to Middelburg on the 8^th of April 2014. A crime intelligence driven sting operation initiated to round up the suspects. Later on the same day just after 16:00 the custodian and the cleaner apprehended at Mhluzi Mall near Middelburg and brought back to Nelspruit. They recovered R121 000 from the suspects which was stashed in their carry bags.

The suspects interviewed and they led the police to five accomplices aged between 28 and 34, who arrested overnight at Pienaar, Masoyi and Kabokweni near Nelspruit. The five consists of a bank administrator, close friends, relatives and a traditional healer whom the duo, the custodian and cleaner, paid to give them muti so that they can evade arrest. Over R3 million recovered during the arrests.

Police further discovered that an amount of R800 000 was loaned to a credible businessman and information at police disposal revealed that he (businessman) was not aware that it was stolen. As part of the investigation, arrangements made for him to give the money back to ABSA.

All seven suspects will appear before the Nelspruit Magistrate’s Court tomorrow, 11 April 2014, facing a charge of theft.