Gumtree user faces fraud charges

Willem Johannes Tobias Carstens, 47, was to have pleaded on Monday to multiple fraud charges involving  R1,474,000, as well as one of money laundering, but the case was instead postponed to April 28 because he had been unable to raise money for his legal fees.

Carstens appeared before Magistrate Amrith Chabilal, who gave privately-funded defence attorney Bern Rautenbach permission to withdraw as his attorney, because the legal fees had not yet been paid.

Carstens is now represented, free of charge, by legal aid attorney Vernon Ebbersohn.

Chabillal said it was the second time that a privately-funded attorney had withdrawn due to Carstens’ failure to pay the fees.

He told Carstens that he would not allow this to happen a third  time, and that his trial would start on April 28 — with or without  legal representation.

Prosecutor Sylvan Africa alleges that Carstens falsely advertised on the Gumtree website that he was in the employ of SANDF, and as such had authority to sell used army vehicles – which  he did not.

Carstens faces 23 counts, of which 17 of fraud relate to his Gumtree advertisements.

A further three related to his falsely representing himself  as an SANDF employee, and two more fraud charges allege that he failed to deliver vehicles for which he had already been paid.

At Monday’s proceedings, it transpired that Carstens was out on R10 000 bail in the Gumtree case, but that he was back in custody following his re-arrest in a different fraud matter.

Carstens told the court he was scheduled to launch a bail application “in three weeks time”, in the Goodwood Magistrate’s Court, in connection with his re-arrest.

He was unable to furnish the commercial court with the date on which his bail application was to take place, as he had “written the date on a piece of paper, which he had left in his cell”.

Gumtree user faces fraud charges << Discussion