Man bust for stealing military 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 the identity of a member of the military.

Admirer Sibanda lived in East London using a stolen identity book belonging to Betwel Juwele, an employee in the South African National Defence Force, and enjoyed a salary and benefits, including UIF-Ters payments, for more than a year during the national state of disaster. 

UIF commissioner Teboho Maruping told TimesLIVE the fund 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, so our system could not pick up the employment of Juwele in another organisation,” Maruping said.

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

“Checks indicted 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.

Maruping said cases of Covid-19 Ters fraud continued to be discovered by their “follow the money” team of forensic auditors. 

Sibanda pretended to be Juwele until the Special Investigation Unit’s (SIU) UIF fraud investigation discovered, last December, the real Juwele.  

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

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

Kganyago said Sibanda confessed to stealing the identity when he was arrested in December.

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

“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. 

TimesLIVE

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