Son who stole post office keys from parents to bag R100,000 gets jail time

A teenager who stole a bunch of keys from his parents' bedroom and used them to steal nearly R100,000 from a post office branch has been sentenced to 12 months in prison.

Donovan Ferreira, 18, and Elroy Kleinhans, 22, were found guilty of housebreaking and theft and each sentenced to 12 months by the Paterson Magistrate's Court in the Eastern Cape on Monday.

The pair broke into the Paterson post office on May 31 around 10pm and stole a bag containing almost R100,000 in cash from the safe.

The burglary was reported to the police the next day and the two were arrested within hours. All of the cash was recovered.

"It was established that Ferreira is the son of a post office employee who had the keys to the post office," said police spokesperson Capt Andre Beetge.

"Ferreira, accompanied by his friend, stole the post office keys from his parents' room and then went to the post office to steal the money." 

Motherwell cluster police commander Maj-Gen Dawie Rabie issued a warning to businesses to take better security measures.

"We cannot believe that all the keys and alarm codes to a business premises keeping large sums of money are kept by only one person. Such a negligent situation is dangerous even to the life of that person due to possibilities of abductions and robberies," he said.

"We urge our business fraternity to re-evaluate their security systems and procedures, such as keys and key keepers, alarm codes and setting of alarms and related routines, to prevent an incident like this from repeating itself."