Two held for scam involving con artists impersonating policemen

A SCAM being run out of a prison, similar to one Port Elizabeth police warned about last week, has been bust in Pretoria.

The scam involves con artists posing as cops to get information about car thefts and hijackings from police stations and then convincing the victims to pay to supposedly get their vehicles back.

This is the second instance of prisoners committing crimes from inside jails to have emerged in South Africa.

On Sunday, Carte Blanche reported on how farmers were being scammed.

The television documentary programme revealed that livestock theft had been taken to a whole new level with a sophisticated scam being operated from within a Free State prison.

In the vehicle con reported yesterday‚ police said two suspects had been arrested in a Pretoria prison by the National Anti-Corruption Investigation Unit.

The men are accused of scamming people in four provinces – Gauteng‚ Mpumalanga‚ KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape. Lucas Masemola, 44, from Sosh- anguve, and Tebogo Makena, 24, from Mamelodi West, are facing charges of extortion‚ fraud‚ theft‚ defeating the ends of justice and impersonating police officers.

They appeared briefly in the Kempton Park Regional Court and have been remanded in custody to December 4.

Lieutenant-Colonel Katlego Mogale said the investigation began in July after the anti- corruption unit received complaints via the SAPS toll-free Crime Stop number‚ 08600-10111‚ regarding an alleged scam whereby con artists were contacting po- lice stations posing as police officers.

“The suspects allegedly obtained information about complainants and suspects in criminal cases‚ mostly in respect of car-jackings and theft of motor vehicles, and would use the information to extort money from their victims,” he said.

“Details as to how and from where the suspects have been obtaining such information also forms part of an investigation.

“The suspects would then contact crime victims‚ inform them that their vehicles had been recovered and advise them to deposit certain amounts of money to get their vehicles back.

“In cases of people who have been arrested, these two suspects would allegedly contact their families to also solicit money.”

Last week, Port Elizabeth police spokeswoman Colonel Priscilla Naidu warned that con artists, likely working for hijacking and car theft gangs, had been phoning victims claiming to have recovered a stolen vehicle.

The caller, who poses either as a police officer or tow truck driver, claims to need between R1 500 and R2 000 to release the “recovered” car.

A Motherwell victim of the scam said at the time that the thieves were believable and had information such as the case number, his cellphone number and details about the theft.

This suggested that the scam was being run by people with access to law enforcement or the vehicle database systems. – TimesLIVE, with additional reporting by Gareth Wilson