A former FNB employee is accused of stealing more than R15 million from a 92-year-old woman, whose vigilance on her accounts revealed the alleged scam.
Lerato Tshukudu faces seven charges of fraud, conspiracy to commit an offence and contravention of the Communications and Transactions Act for hacking into the FNB account of Luisa Sophia Mostert and transferring money in five fraudulent transactions in April 2018.
Last week, it emerged in the Johannesburg specialised commercial crimes court that Mostert — who lived in Stellenbosch — realised her funds were missing when she could not use her bank card, which had been cancelled. She died in July 2019.
Tshukudu, on 17 April 2018, “placed a notice of closure” on Mostert’s account, according to the National Prosecuting Authority’s charge sheet, presented in court by prosecutor Bongani Chauke.
Tshukudu allegedly nominated a Congolese national named Pamela Haigh as a “beneficiary” of Mostert’s closed bank account.
“The accused [Tshukudu] conducted herself … while acting together, in concert and in furtherance of a common purpose with Ms Pamela Haigh and some other persons who are at present unknown to the state,” reads the charge sheet.
Tshukudu detailed an elaborate version of the crime, saying she was kidnapped by unknown assailants and forced to transfer money from one account to another.
Testifying on Thursday, the fraud accused said she was driving with her four-months-old son after work when a black BMW sedan flagged her down.
Under cross-examination from Chauke, Tshukudu said she thought the male driver “wanted directions”.
She said that when the driver reached her window, which was rolled down, he took out a taser gun and told her to sit in the back seat with her son.
“I jumped in the back and he drove my car. We were following the BMW,” Tshukudu testified, saying there were two other men in the alleged kidnapping incident.
She added that they took her to an open veld where she begged for her son’s life; she was then blindfolded and driven to a house.
At the house, Tshukudu said that a white woman and a Congolese woman joined the three men, and that they knew details about her private life, including that her son was her third attempt at bearing a child, having allegedly had two previous miscarriages.
She said she was then told that the two women would arrive at her FNB branch in Krugersdorp, where she would be required to transfer Mostert’s investment account funds to a designated account.
Tshukudu said the alleged kidnappers threatened her son’s life, and she was told not to alert the police or her employer of the alleged plan.
“He took my son and put him in an oven. I was so scared and I saw two ladies, a Congolese lady and a white woman, and they told me that I needed to transfer the money into the Congolese lady’s account,” she said.
Tshukudu added that she was later released at the same piece of open veld, from where she drove home.
She said the two women were in the bank when she made the transfers the next day.
Tshukudu testified that she did not inform her superiors of the act, hoping the plan would be exposed.
According to the charge sheet, two transfers of R928 068.21 and R19 500 were made on 20 April into Tshukudu and Haigh’s accounts, respectively, three days after the closure of Mostert’s account.
Three more transactions were made into Haigh’s account on 21 and 22 April, seemingly contradicting Tshukudu’s version that the full R15.2 million was transferred on the same day.
It took Mostert realising that her card was not working for FNB investigators — and later the police — to notice the alleged theft.
This was after the 92-year-old woman went to a branch in Stellenbosch to flag possible fraud on her account. Tshukudu’s employee number, which has a unique code linked to the banking system, came out as having dealt with Mostert’s account without her permission.
Tshukudu told Chauke that she did not deny the charges against her, but refuted that she intended to commit the crimes.
Chauke asked: “You knew at the time when you acted … that whatever you were doing was illegal, right?” to which the accused answered: “Yes.”
Asked why she did not alert her supervisor, she said: “I couldn’t alert them because I was new at the branch and I didn’t know who these people [kidnappers] were working with.”
The trial continues in court.
It comes in the wake of the Mail & Guardian’s 28 July report that the country’s financial sector is battling to stay on top of increasingly sophisticated methods of cybercrime, targeting pensioners in the main.
FNB’s corporate affairs executive Jacqui O’Sullivan said the bank took fraud schemes targeting older people seriously.
“While noting that senior citizens are more vulnerable to becoming victims [of] fraud crime, the bank has a layered approach to protecting clients from fraud incidents through both preventative and detective controls,” O’Sullivan said, adding that FNB worked closely with law enforcement agencies and updated its systems in line with new trends.
“Should preventative measures fail, the detective controls then pick up the fraud and allow for a faster recovery.”
She did not respond to questions about whether the bank was confident that none of its other clients had been defrauded without their knowledge.
“In an unforeseen scenario where our customer has been defrauded from their bank account and especially when an employee may have bypassed the system and colluded in the crime, FNB will take full responsibility and, after investigations have been concluded, we will reimburse the client,” O’Sullivan said, adding that “appropriate action” would be taken against the staff member.
