Constable can't pull rank

25 September 2015 - 02:33 By Graeme Hosken

For Mr Constable, an ingenious serial fraudster who committed his cons by allegedly masquerading as a police officer, the game is up. The suspect was arrested in a major police crackdown on bogus officers using their rank to defraud people.Jonathan Constable, 44, was arrested by the Hawks in Nelspruit on Tuesday after they received information that the suspect was allegedly coercing foreigners in South Africa into paying him not to deport them.His arrest follows the capture of Windy Judas Mahlangu, 46, an Mpumalanga traffic official arrested for corruption.Moments after being released on bail on Wednesday police rearrested Mahlangu on another case of corruption.Police said that Constable, using his surname as his fake rank, was arrested as he was about to deposit money at a bank.Hawks spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi confirmed the arrest and said Constable was found in possession of several people's passports.He said the suspect masqueraded as a member of the Anti-Corruption Unit, whose responsibilities include investigating corruption and immigration documents."He allegedly demanded bribes from foreign nationals, after threatening them with arrest and deportation," Mulaudzi said,Constable, from Hermanus in the Western Cape, was first arrested in Musina in 2011 after he apparently conned Home Affairs Department officials into giving him a car under the pretence that he was going to arrest illegal immigrants."He also defrauded unsuspecting business people in Musina of nearly R200000."Prior to this Constable was arrested for defrauding former soldiers in Cape Town and Pretoria out of thousands of rands," Mulaudzi said.Commenting on Mahlangu's arrest, police spokesman Robert Netshiunda said shortly after the Mpumalanga traffic official was granted R5000 bail by the Wolmaransstad Magistrate's Court for a charge of defrauding a Mpumalanga municipality out of R540000, he was rearrested on another fraud charge.He said Mahlangu was wanted in connection with several fraud cases in Mpumalanga...

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