Standard Bank wants a former employee who helped steal R2.4m from a dead woman’s estate to pay back every cent – even if it takes 30 years.
Should the bank succeed in obtaining the civil judgment – filed on Friday – the disgraced employee and his co-accused, a Nelson Mandela Bay businessman, will have to start paying back the money after they are released from prison, should the court opt to send them to jail.
With a prescribed minimum sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment on the fraud count alone, chances are that Sibongile Nkosana, 36, and Owethu Mhlana, 37, the owner of Mhlana Development CC, will receive harsh penalties when the Port Elizabeth Commercial Crimes Court delivers its verdict in June.
The men were found guilty in March of forgery, fraud and money laundering after they managed to siphon more than R2.4m from Olive Knobel’s estate – money that had been left to her three children.
Knobel, a Standard Bank client with several bank accounts, died on September 30 2014.
The executors of her estate, Stephen, Brian and Louise Knobel, then appointed Gideon Pitzer to represent them.
The Master of the High Court in Cape Town, where the siblings live, accordingly issued the letter of executorship on March 12 2015.
However, unbeknown to them, every last cent of their inheritance had already been stolen by an employee at the bank’s Pickering Street branch and his businessman friend.
A case was reported to the police after Knobel’s children tried to claim their inheritance.
The bank, ultimately forced to reimburse Knobel’s heirs, has asked the court to impose a hefty prison sentence and, in doing so, wants an order in terms of Section 300 of the Criminal Procedure Act for reimbursement.Magistrate Lionel Lindoor will give judgment on the application when he sentences the men on June 27.The bank wants its money, plus interest, and the judgment could hang over the fraudsters’ heads for up to 30 years.On February 23 2015, Nkosana accessed all of Knobel’s accounts and fraudulently opened a new account in the name of “Estate Late Olive Knobel”.He forged the identity document of Stephen Knobel, his proof of residence, letter of excutorship and completed Standard Bank documentation, with a falsified signature.On March 9, he was issued an AutoBank card linked to the new fake account with an electronic account payment limit of R500,000.The next day he created an electronic account payment on the account – a Nedbank account for Mhlana Development in Motherwell.On March 10 and 11, Nkosana transferred R250,000 to Mhlana Development.The following day, the 12th, he increased the limit to R2m and proceeded to transfer the rest of the money.From there, Mhlana laundered the money through several other accounts, including business accounts, a Foschini account and an account belonging to Nkosana.Clifford Uppink, manager for the investigation of internal and external threats at Standard Bank, was tasked to probe the fraud.He noticed that the ID number recorded on the letter of executorship was the same as the number reflected on the copy of Stephen’s ID, but that the middle digits were 5134 on the one document and 5143 on the other.He picked up further that the copy of the proof of residence certified by Nkosana was a Foschini account statement and though it carried the name of Mr SD Knobel, it was actually addressed to a Ms L Strydom.He said this should have immediately raised a red flag.Stephen, through his lawyers, lodged a complaint regarding the R2.4m that had been stolen and the bank ultimately took a decision to refund him and his siblings.Standard Bank accordingly suffered the financial loss and was only able to recover about R218,000 from Nkosana’s pension fund.