The Hawks’ serious commercial crime investigation team assisted by the priority crime specialised investigation team in Northern Cape recovered over R4-million from about R11-million defrauded from Shop-to-Shop on Tuesday.
The recovery emanates from the arrest of three Bangladesh nationals – Aminul Islam, 39, Ullah Foji, 36, and 23-year-old Akter Atika.
According to Lieutenant-Colonel Tebogo Thebe, Northern Cape police spokesperson, the trio has been charged with fraud and money-laundering.
Allegations are that between March 1 and 3, the accused tampered with a drop-safe used at their shop.
“They allegedly dropped an amount of R707 040 repeatedly thereby making their drop-safe app account linked to the safe to be credited with approximately R11-million,” said Thebe.
“A total of R11-million was immediately transferred to different bank accounts locally and offshore.”
Thebe said irregular activities of the safe were detected and reported to the directorate and the suspects were traced at Kimberley Airport, where they were about to board a flight to Johannesburg.
“Their final destination was reportedly Dubai/Dhaka as per their airline tickets. Police searched the accused and an amount of R23 000 was found in their possession and seized.”
Numerous bail applications were made and the state managed to oppose them successfully. The matter has been remanded to June 29 for further investigation.
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