The Endumeni local municipality in northern KwaZulu-Natal has opened a case with the SA Police Service after scammers opened a fraudulent account with Capitec Bank and duped ratepayers into paying for municipal services using it.
Only after residents began to complain when their power was cut off — despite having paid for the service — did the Dundee-based municipality learn of the scam.
It later turned out that the ratepayers made the payments to the fraudulent bank account.
The municipality then issued a public notice to alert residents that it has not changed its bank account from FNB to Capitec as claimed by the scammers.
The bank account details show that a Capitec branch in Pretoria opened it in February 2023, and its official name is “Endumeni Municipality”.
Cases of fraud opened
The municipality has since warned ratepayers to shun the account and stick to the official one with FNB while the matter is being investigated by the police and the internal fraud unit of Capitec.
“We’d like to alert you to potential scam messages circulating in the community. Scammers can disguise these messages as legitimate communication to deceive you into making financial transactions,” reads the public notice signed off by the municipal manager, Siyabonga Ntombela.
“Recently, we have been experiencing an increasing number of complaints from the ratepayers and businesses being scammed about electricity disconnections and a scammer claiming that the municipality has changed the bank [FNB] it is using to another [Capitec].
“We’d like to assure you that the municipality still uses FNB as a banking service provider, and the electricity reconnections can only be paid at the municipal offices, not to individuals.”
The municipality confirmed that it has opened cases of fraud and that Capitec has since frozen the account pending an investigation.
It is not clear how much the scammers were able to fleece the unsuspecting ratepayers ever since they started duping them.
