One of the ringleaders behind a South African Post Bank scam and subsequent robberies, as well as another accused who was sentenced to hefty jail terms more than a decade ago, has after all these years turned to the Supreme Court of Appeal, where they maintained their innocence.
Maxam Onasis, who had been the ringleader, was convicted by the Gauteng High Court on 48 charges and sentenced to an effective 23 years’ imprisonment. Bongani Nkosi, who was not a Post Office worker, was sentenced to an effective 20 years on 37 convictions, and both turned to the SCA.
In a judgment, penned by Judge Phillip Coppin, the SCA confirmed that there was a criminal enterprise behind the series of Post Office robberies. While the court did find in their favour on a few of the many charges, the effective sentences of both men remain exactly the same.
The high court earlier heard evidence that members of a syndicate carried out daring robberies at nine SA Post Office branches around Johannesburg, involving around R2million fraudulent activities.
Consisting of mostly branch managers and tellers at Ekurhuleni and the East Rand post offices, the gang would clone IDs and use them to open savings accounts that were used to channel huge amounts of cash from post office coffers.
In June 2008, four accounts were credited with R80,000 each from the Boksburg North post office, while the fifth bogus account was credited with R20,000 on the same day. On that day, a gang armed with knives and guns pounced on post office staff, holding them hostage by locking them in a safe after taking their cellphones and cash from their tills.
Once staff members were out of sight, colleagues who were members of the syndicate would come in, take over the tills and manipulate the system to indicate that people whose names the accounts were opened in had deposited money into their Postbank accounts.
Syndicate members not employed by the post office would take IDs bearing their pictures but other people’s details and approach Postbank to withdraw the money – ensuring that tellers behind the tills were members of the syndicates so that their identities were not scrutinised.
The biggest transaction was made in July 2008, when syndicate members transferred R1.2m into five Postbank accounts in Pretoria. Judge Coppin commented that it cannot be disputed on the facts that during the period from March 2008 to July 2008, nine fraudulent bank accounts (false accounts) were opened by certain of the accused at various branches of the post office.
Evidence also confirmed that during this time robberies were perpetrated at various branches of the post office, one in Midrand, and others in the East Rand. The modus operandi in the robberies was generally the same.
During a robbery and once the staff had been removed or detained in the safe, the branch’s computers would be used to enter fictitious deposits into the false account(s) that had been opened.
The false accounts would be credited with amounts as if actual deposits into that account had been made, whereas that was not the case. The computers and equipment and other robbed items would then be removed from the scene by the robbers; and withdrawals would be made from these false accounts, using the cards that had been issued in respect of those accounts.
The court concluded that evidence established the existence of a criminal enterprise responsible for looting the Post Office, and that apart from the few convictions now overturned by the SCA, Onasis and Nkosi were part of it.
zelda.venter@inl.co.za
