Man bust for stealing SANDF member's identity and claiming Ters

The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) paid Covid-19 temporary employee/employer relief scheme (Ters) money for more than a year to a Zimbabwean man, who stole an SANDF member’s identity.

Admirer Sibanda lived his life in the coastal town of East London using a stolen identity book of an SANDF employee, Betwel Juwele, and enjoyed salary and benefits, including UIF-Ters money for more than a year during the national state of disaster. 

UIF Commissioner Teboho Maruping told TimesLIVE that UIF could no pickup the identity fraud before payouts as government departments do not contribute to UIF.

“Government Departments do not contribute to or declare their employees with the UIF, and so our system could not pick up employment of Juwele in another organisation,” Maruping said.

He said Jewele appeared on their database under a labour broker, Workers Unlimited.

“Checks indicted that Juwele had contributed to the UIF as an employee of Workers Unlimited and hence the claim could be approved.”

He claimed for Ters payments between March 2020 and April 2021 and received R 4,890.

Marupind added that cases of Covid-19 Ters fraud continued to their “follow the money” team of forensic auditors. 

Sibanda under false identity was Juwele until Special Investigation Unit’s UIF fraud investigation discovered, last December, the real Juwele who is an SANDF employee.  

SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said their investigations found an ID with the same names and ID number as the UIF application was used by an employee of SANDF and that prompted a probe.  

“The real Juwele, who is based in Pretoria, uses a smart card, while Sibanda used an ID book of Juwele to apply for TERS in East London.” 

Kganyago said Sibanda confessed to stealing the SANDF’s member’s identity upon his arrest last December.

Sibanda was convicted of fraud and identity theft by the East London magistrate’s court and sentenced to one year imprisonment.  

“The court sentenced Sibanda to one-year imprisonment and ordered that after serving the prison sentence he be deported by the Home Affairs department to his country of origin, Zimbabwe,” Kganyago said.