Women’s ID fraud nightmare.
For three years Yolandé has gone through hell after a conwoman got hold of her ID number and used it to defraud innocent people out of their cash
WHENEVER her cellphone rings her heart sinks. Will it be someone in tears or another ir a t e pe r son swearing at her and accusing her of being a lying scumbag? Even worse is when furious people pitch up at her door to confront her.
The past three years have been pure hell for Yolandé le Grange (40), she tells us. Her ID landed in the wrong hands and she’s now frequently threatened with legal action and accused of conning people out of their hard-earned savings.
Her name often crops up on social media in posts warning people to be on the lookout for “this thieving woman”. She was also recently named in a story on our sister magazine Huisgenoot’s website in which another disgruntled person accused her of trying to cheat them out of thousands of rands.
Huisgenoot reported in February that Natasha Potgieter had responded to an online advertisement for a vehicle for sale in Summerstrand, Port Elizabeth. The advertiser wanted only R35 000 for a 2004 VW Polo TDi model. It was her late son’s car, she claimed, and she wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible because it brought back too many memories.
The advertiser called herself Belinda Nagel and sent copies of her identity document, the car’s registration papers and all relevant documentation. But every time Natasha’s parents wanted to view the car Belinda had an excuse.
Then, on 14 February, Belinda called and told them someone else was also interested in buying the car and a R2 000 cash deposit would improve their chances of securing it.
Natasha’s parents immediately smelt a rat and started looking more closely at the documentation. Then the penny dropped! The car’s registration documents were false and the ID number
didn’t belong to Belinda Nagel but to Yolandé le Grange.
By this time Belinda had already disappeared without a trace and fingers started pointing at Yolandé, a mom of two who recently moved to East London from Pretoria. The suspicion was that she’d been using the name Belinda as a pseudonym to trick unsuspecting people out of thousands.
When Yolandé read the report her blood boiled. She needed to clear her name and warn others so they didn’t land up in the same boat as her.
IT ALL started in July 2014, says Yolandé, a tall blonde who looks nothing like the photo on the false ID that’s doing the rounds. “We love going camping and we were trying to buy a caravan. I went onto OLX [an online website where people can sell unwanted items] and saw an ad for a Jurgens Palma caravan for sale in Alberton [in Gauteng]. We were still living in Pretoria then and were interested. There were photos of how the caravan looked and it seemed totally legit.”
The seller introduced herself as Colleen and followed a similar modus operandi to the woman in the Summerstrand incident, asking for a deposit and giving excuses why the caravan couldn’t be inspected. Yolandé wasn’t keen. She said she’d prefer to pay for it in full once she’d had a chance to see it.
“Colleen asked for a copy of my ID for some or other reason, so I sent it to her.”
About 10 minutes after she’d sent it she received a message saying the caravan had already been sold. “I was upset because we’d reached an agreement but I left it at that,” Yolandé says.
Less than a month later, on 22 August, the drama started. Yolandé received a call from a furious man. He told her a woman by the name of Linda had been advertising a caravan. He’d paid a R3 000 deposit but when he arrived at the address where she’d told him the caravan was parked he discovered he’d been directed to a retirement home and realised he’d been conned.
He’d been given Yolandé’s ID number, which he said proved she was the one who’d conned him using a fake name.
“It was terrible,” Yolandé says. “The more I told him I hadn’t sold him a caravan the less he believed me.”
Later the man showed her email correspondence he’d had with the woman.
“When I saw the emails it rang a bell. Each email is typed in Afrikaans in a specific font and a woman’s name is at the bottom typed in italics. I remembered that I’d also received an email like that.”
She recalled the woman who’d advertised the caravan and had asked for a copy of her ID and realised her name was being used in a scam. The man laid a charge of fraud against Yolandé at the Pretoria North police station and she in turn laid a charge of identify fraud there.
Soon afterwards another man phoned her accusing her of conning him out of a R3 000 deposit he’d paid for a caravan. He was from Richards Bay, KwaZulu-Natal, and swore at her a lot, vowing he’d have her prosecuted and that she’d sleep in jail for years.
Since then seven other people have also accused Yolandé of fraud, saying they’d been fleeced out of deposits when responding to online adverts supposedly placed by her for vehicles. Using her ID number, some of them tracked down her address and turned up at her house. “When they shouted at me I’d give them the case number of the identity fraud charge I’d laid because they wouldn’t believe me. What else could I do?”
Having her name blackened has had a big impact on her life.
“Gumtree and OLX have blocked me from their websites because adverts in my name have been reported as scams.”
Yolandé says the fraudster uses her name, and also Colleen, Linda and Belinda, and she always speaks Afrikaans.
“To our knowledge she’s been getting away with this for three years already,” Yolandé says. “I think at some point this woman will overplay her hand. At least that’s what I’m hoping for . . .”
Detective Ernest Feleka of the Pretoria North police station confirms that Yolandé le Grange has opened a case of identity fraud that’s still under investigation. He says it’s easier to track guilty parties when money is transferred to a regular bank account but in cases like the ones involving Yolandé’s ID, where transactions are conducted in cash or by instant payments to a cellphone eWallet, they’re much harder to trace.
‘It rang a bell . . . I remembered that I’d also received an email like that’