Cape Town - A suspected fraudster has been nabbed by cops after dodging his desperate “clients” for months.
The 25-year-old man allegedly claimed to be a lawyer and, advertising his services using the alias Morne van der Westhuizen on Facebook, said he could have people’s debt written off for R1 500.
The post read: “I by law can confirm your debt exceeds your salary, whereby your creditors details will go onto a court order where it will be signed and stamped by a judge in the Cape Town High Court instructing your creditors to have your debt written off.
“Process takes five working days and your name will be cleared by all ITC’s such as Transunion, Experian and Compuscan.
“So you will be credit-worthy again to apply for a bond, vehicle, finance, loans, credit cards, etc. Special price this weekend only of R1 500. WhatsApp me if interested.”
But his time was up when Anthea van der Vent, 35, and her colleague Belinda Botha, 32, laid charges after being scammed out of R1 500 each in October.
“We saw the advertisement on Facebook. He claimed to be an attorney based between Wynberg and the Cape High Court,” the pair says.
“He said we would be ‘debt free’ after five working days and a court will sign this off.
“He even texted an image of a court document stating a case he had worked on and that’s where we believed him.
“He stated he was friends with the CEOs of FNB, Capitec and Standard Bank and things have been arranged.
“All we had to do was ask for a reversal on our debit orders and all would be sorted. Then he told us to send the money via Shoprite or Pep and we deposited R1 500 each at Shoprite.
“After the seventh working day he became stroppy and started demanding more money because we’re ‘slowing down’ the process by not giving him more clients.”
The women realised it was a scam after people started complaining on social media.
Police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Andre Traut confirmed the man has been arrested on a charge of fraud by Lentegeur police.
He was due to appear in the Mitchells Plain Magistrates’ Court on Friday.