An SAPS Task Team, based at the airport, arrested the Pretoria man on Thursday last week for the theft of the vehicle.
The suspect will also face a charge of perjury after he opened a false hijacking case at the Tembisa Police Station.
The vehicle company became suspicious of the hijacking claims when they failed to find him in Tembisa, where he was supposed to have met a representative of the company. Furthermore, his phone “stopped working” and they could no longer locate him.
The matter was immediately reported to the police task team, which was formed to investigate serious crimes in and around the airport’s periphery.
The task team, together with a vehicle tracking company, went into full swing and tracked the vehicle to a mall parking lot in Gezina, Pretoria.
It was found without a licence disc and number plates.
Unaware that police were lying low within the vehicle’s vicinity, a man approached the vehicle and as he opened it, he was surrounded by police officers. He was then identified as the same man who had rented the car.
Over and above the charges of theft and perjury, the man will also face several counts of fraud after the police found three identity documents and four driver’s licences with different names, but bearing his photo, at his place of residence not far from where the vehicle was found.
Four credit cards with different names were also found.
The suspect will be further profiled to determine if he is wanted in connection with other cases.
This man’s arrest comes shortly after a man from Midrand was arrested earlier this month for buying a vehicle which was stolen from another rental company at the airport.
Michael Thage allegedly bought the vehicle from Prince Maluleke, who rented the car, but failed to return it.
Maluleke was arrested shortly after the theft in March and both he and Thage are out on R5 000 bail each.
The two are due to appear together in Kempton Park Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.
