Four men accused of stealing a corpse in order to claim from policies were on Friday handed lengthy jail terms by the Harrismith magistrate’s court in Free State.
The court sentenced Maneo Mokoena to 16 years direct imprisonment and Malefu Mokoena was handed a five-year jail term. Their co-accused, Mannini Mphetheng and Tumelo Moeletsane were jailed for eight years each.
The accused were also linked to gang-related crimes, fraud, identity theft, attempted murder, kidnapping and money-laundering.
The convicts were arrested on November 19 2021 after they had stolen a corpse at the Puthaditjhaba forensic pathology services in Qwaqwa by the Hawks, members of the serious commercial crime investigation, and crime intelligence in Free State.
Hawks spokesperson in the province, Captain Christopher Singo, said: “After the corpse was stolen, the Hawks conducted an investigation.
“We discovered that the accused were taking policies with different insurance companies and would later go to government mortuaries and identify the corpses as people they have covered on their policies. After taking these corpses, they will then go and claim from policies using fake identity.”
Singo added that the convicts also kidnapped people and claimed that they were dead in order to cash in from the policies.
“The amount of policies that the accused persons claimed from the insurance companies is estimated at R430 000. These incidents took place during the period of 2017 until December 2019,” he said.
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