Vodacom SMS fraud case in court

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

Full Profile

E-mail

The day’s proceedings centred around Mbusi Bhengu’s bail application following the release of his co-accused Mbokodana Khoza, 39, on R15 000 bail last Friday.

Exuding confidence and frequently laughing off accusations made against him, Bhengu, 28, denied involvement in any fraudulent activities, nor any collusion with Khoza, a Vodacom engineer, to defraud Vodacom clients of R1.8m.

The state alleges that the two men formed part of a syndicate that stole millions of rands from clients of all four major banks – First National Bank, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank – as well as Capitec Bank.

Most of the clients were defrauded after their banking details were stolen by the syndicate through a method known as phishing – the acquiring of sensitive information such as passwords, by masquerading as a business in electronic communication.

In regard to Vodacom clients, a Vodacom employee, allegedly Khoza, would intercept Vodacom clients’ text messages to obtain their sensitive banking details like pin numbers and passwords.

To do this, Khoza allegedly created a temporary SIM card which was a copy of the banking customer’s.

The fraudsters, using the stolen banking information, would then arrange for a “onetime” password to be sent to the customer which would be intercepted by the Vodacom employee.

The password was then used to transfer money from the bank customer’s account to that belonging to the fraudster.

They then withdrew the money and threw away the ATM card.

Through all this, a client will not receive any correspondence regarding transactions from their accounts, as all text messages in this regard will go straight to the fraudulent SIM copy in possession of the alleged fraudsters, said prosecutor Richard Chabalala.

During cross-examination of Bhengu during the bail application, Chabalala alleged Bhengu had couried several bank cards to Durban, using the South African Airways courier services.

He also said police had found a book with a list of bank account details of several people, allegedly used to transfer the money obtained fraudulently.

“Large sums of money were transferred from five banks to 155 accounts of your syndicate,” said Chabalala.

But Bhengu denied any knowledge of this nor any involvement in it.

“I don’t know why I’m being linked to this… I never assisted Chris [Khoza]… never intercepted the SMS’,” said Bhengu.

Asked by his lawyer, Kanesh Maharajh, why Khoza had implicated him, Bhengu said Khoza could have implicated him as he had shown interest in his project.

He said he had approached Khoza after a mutual friend told him that the Vodacom employee might help him enter into business with the cellphone giant.

“Chris [Khoza], as a Vodacom employee was going to make things easy for me… to help me make a presentation at Vodacom,” he said.

The presentation was in line with a business idea that he wanted to pitch at Vodacom in order to help “sporting fans buy tickets through their cellphones”.

“The idea was to make life easier for soccer… rugby fans. There are always long queues at games so with this project, fans would have been able to purchase tickets through their cellphones… particularly for the 2010 World Cup,” said Bhengu.

On the day of his arrest, he said he was busy in a meeting with a business “mogul” Khoza had introduced him to, who “saw potential” in his project and intended “doing whatever it took” to see Bhengu’s project kicking off.

It also emerged during the bail hearing that Bhengu had two identity documents and two passports.

He said he had stopped using the first ID, which had the wrong date of birth, when the Home Affairs department issued him with the second one.

Failure to confiscate the faulty document was due to lack of time, he said.

“I was busy organising events [through his events co-ordinating company] so I didn’t have time to be burning ID’s,” he said.

Bhengu, who was arrested on July 9, said he intended pleading not guilty to all charges brought against him.

He said he would be able to afford R10 000 bail, which was R5000 less than what Khoza was given last Friday.

Chabalala said he will oppose the bail.

Judge Jerry Jansen van Vuuren postponed the matter to August 19 for the continuation of the bail hearing.

Vodacom SMS fraud case discussion