Fraudster gets 2 000 hours

2008-08-27 20:22

Durban - A Durban card cloning kingpin found guilty of 157 counts of fraud as well as 28 counts of card cloning was sentenced to 2 000 hours of periodical imprisonment by the Durban Commercial Crime Court on Wednesday.

Siphiwe Mcanyana's periodical sentence will run only over weekends. He received another three years in prison, suspended for five years.

Mcanyana was found guilty of contravening the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act by cloning bank cards using information from skimming devices.

He cloned 28 bank cards which were used by other people to defraud financial institutions including Standard Bank, Absa, First National Bank, Nedbank and Nedcor.

The court heard that Mcanyana was not personally involved in most of the crimes itself but "acted in concert with those who perpetrated the frauds".

More than R235 000 had been defrauded from the banks with the cloned cards.

The court heard that Mcanyana was introduced to this crime by a friend from KwaMashu.

He showed Mcanyana how to clone cards: the skimming device would be attached to the computer and the information would be downloaded. It would then be used to clone the card.

Mcanyana then took up the business.

Court papers stated that people would provide the accused with skimming devices with information already captured on it.

"Thereafter the accused would transfer the information to the computer and produce a cloned card. ...The accused usually charged R300 per card."

During his appearance, Mcanyana admitted that his actions were unlawful and intentional.

With his sentence, the court said Mcanyana would also pay compensation of R175 000 to the financial institutions - R80 000 by August 29 this year and R5 000 per month thereafter.

- SAPA