Fraudster teacher convicted again

A TEACHER who was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment last month after he tricked his workmates by using their credentials to apply for loans from banks and converted the proceeds to his own use, has been slapped with a further four-month jail term.

Apart from the three counts of fraud that he had earlier on been convicted of, Dominic Dhlamini (29) has been convicted of yet another fraud charge as defined in Section 136 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9:23 by Mutare magistrate Ms Perseverance Makala.

In the recent case he was charged alone while in the other three matters he was jointly charged with Tatenda Cosmas Teya (30) who, however, was acquitted after a full trial.

Dhlamini was slapped with a six-month jail term which was suspended on condition that he restitutes the complainant of $3 900 by October 31.

Mr Cuthbert Bhosha prosecuted. The court heard that in December 2017, Dhlamini approached Richard Chimhiti, who is also a teacher and asked him if he was interested in the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) exercise. He then told the complainant that he could link him with those responsible for recruitment.

When the complainant showed interest, Dhlamini asked for his original payslip and photocopy of his national identity card.

“After obtaining these documents, Dhlamini went to Lion Micro Finance, Mutare branch and applied for a loan. He then went back to the complainant and told him that he had sold a motor vehicle and that the buyer was using a CABS bank account, which he did not have.

“The complainant gave Dhlamini his CABS account number which he then used together with the particulars he had been given to apply for a loan of $2 800. This was without the complainant’s knowledge and the complainant was going to be garnished a monthly instalment of $310 for 24 months from his bank account,” said Mr Bhosha. On December 23, 2017 Lion Micro Finance deposited $2 590 into the complainant’s bank account. The suspect asked the complainant if he had received his money and asked him to transfer it to his CBZ account using the Zipit system.

The suspect went back to Lion Micro Finance and topped the loan with another $500. When the money was deposited into the complainant’s account on January 4, 2018, the suspect instructed him to transfer the money into his CBZ account using the Zipit system again.

Using the same modus operandi, Dhlamini used Patience Mukombwe’s particulars to apply for a loan of $2 000 from Credfin Micro Finance. He also instructed Mukombwe to transfer the money into his Ecocash account. Mukombwe was to be garnished a monthly instalment of $267 for 24 months.

The complainants only realised that they had been duped when their accounts were garnished on January 22, 2018.

They went to the salary service bureau to inquire about the deducted money and were informed that they had applied for loans from the different micro finance companies.