Ordinary South Africans with knowledge of and access to technology are increasingly doing the police’s detective work and helping to solve crimes.
Take the case of Sylvie and Deon Robertse of the Cape Town suburb of Vredehoek. Early one Sunday morning last month, burglars broke into their split-level home after unhinging a sliding glass door. They made off with a cellphone and a wallet but luckily left the sleeping occupants unharmed.
But here’s where the story takes an upturn.
As soon as Sylvie and Deon realised they had been burgled, instead of calling the police, they turned first to Sylvie’s cellphone service provider, MTN. “A very helpful guy gave us all the numbers that were called from my phone around the estimated time of the break-in,” said Sylvie.
The first call one of the thieves had made from the stolen phone was to someone near his home. The owner of the number confirmed the call to Sylvie. Later, when two uniformed local constables arrived they called the same number and were given the name and address of the suspect.
Getting a van to go out and arrest him proved tricky as the officers who called in the address to their charge office were told “we haven’t got a van at the moment”. Eventually the suspect was picked up.
It was only later in the day that Sylvie discovered that her wallet, and not only her cellphone, had been stolen. She immediately called her bank, Nedbank, and had her debit and credit cards stopped.
After visiting her branch the following day, a Monday, she discovered that between 5am when the cards had been stolen and about noon that Sunday when she had reported their loss, the suspect had gone on a R30 000 spending spree. The young man had used her card unhindered in at least seven big retail stores including Hi Fi Corporation, Pick ’n Pay, Spar, Ackermans, Seven Eleven and OK Foods.
“I was curious to learn how a man could use my card with a name that is clearly a woman’s. I also would like to know whether any of these transactions took place after I reported my cards [stolen],” said Sylvie.
Dennis Cope, group financial director for Pick ’n Pay, said it was very difficult for cashiers to verify signatures on credit cards although they were under instruction to do so.
“Sometimes, by the time a thief presents a card for payment, he or she has already learnt how to forge that signature,” he said.
He added that the credit card is an antiquated system of payment as it originated years before widespread fraud had taken root. “If a thief steals a debit card that doesn’t have a pin number or a credit card that has not been stopped it is very difficult to prevent them from using it,” he added.
Roy Pillay of Nedbank’s fraud division disagreed and said it was part of the agreement with banks that retailers verify signatures on cards. “What would be the point of having a client sign a card? A way of protecting yourself, though, is to subscribe to our SMS service that will alert you each time your card is used. This way you can track any unauthorised purchases on your card,” he said.
The Robertses will, of course, not be held responsible for the fraud as they had paid the lost card protection fee. Nedbank has initiated its own investigation and will be calling for the signed receipts from the stores.
Meanwhile a neighbour of the Robertses, Jeremy Warner, informed them the burglars had been captured on CCTV arriving in a white Polo and speeding off afterwards.
Now here’s where the story takes a nosedive: while it may be relatively easy to solve some crimes, getting them brought successfully to court is another matter altogether. It’s been about two weeks since the arrest of the suspect but the investigating officer, a Constable Ongansie, has contacted neither the Robertses nor Warner.
Contacted by the Mail & Guardian recntly, Ongansie said he was overwhelmed with work and had more than 90 dockets to deal with. He wasn’t sure where this specific docket was; perhaps the court, he said.
Ongansie did promise, however, that he would get to the Robertses’ case and collect the CCTV footage from Warner as soon as he could.