Cops implicated in social grant syndicate
Five men including two police officials were arrested for theft and fraud last week.
POLICE officers from the provincial crime intelligence, Umbilo SAPS and Durban Public Order Policing arrested five men aged between 23 and 55 including two police officials for theft and fraud in Durban and surrounding areas last week.
The Crime Intelligence officers were working on a theft case which occurred in KwaDabeka and when they interviewed the complainant she alleged that the people who came to her house were looking for South African Social Security Agency cards.
She also informed them that the people who came to her house introduced themselves as policemen and took her identity document, bank cards, two social grant cards for her children and R5700.
The complainant was not in the house at the time but she allegedly received a call from a person who introduced himself as a police captain who told her that they had taken her identity document and bank card and if she wanted it back she must return the SASSA cards in her possession.
The woman had 200 SASSA cards which was given to her by one of the people who came to her house. The Crime Intelligence officers set up a meeting between the woman and the police captain in Durban.
The woman took the cards with her to meet this man. The officers set up surveillance and observed the two people meet and the bag with the SASSA cards exchange hands.
The officers pounced on them and later discovered that the criminal was indeed a police captain stationed at Protection and Security Services (PSS). They also fund the woman’s identity book and bank cards on the man.
The officers then went to the Umlazi township where they arrested three more men and a warrant officer was arrested at Mobeni Heights. Those arrested were charged for fraud and theft and appeared at the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court and Durban Magistrate’s Court on Thursday 20 March.
