Jermaine Prim, a convicted gangster from Eldorado Park in Johannesburg, is allegedly running an elaborate luxury car theft syndicate targeting Mercedes-Benz vehicle owners from inside his prison cell.
Prim, who is facing fresh theft and fraud charges, allegedly scours social media sites and consumer complaints platforms such as Hellopeter to look for disgruntled Mercedes-Benz vehicle owners to dupe them into “voluntarily” giving him their cars.
So sophisticated is Prim’s scam, according to the state, that he was allegedly able to clone the telephone number of Mercedes-Benz South Africa’s head office and pass himself off as the vehicle maker’s senior official.
Prim is incarcerated in the Johannesburg Correctional Centre. In 2016, he was sentenced to six years in jail for car theft. He remains in jail for the alleged theft and fraud committed while in prison. Prim is applying for bail after his six-year sentence lapsed, and will appear again in court on Friday.
His first conviction was in 2012 for car theft, receiving a four-year sentence, and was released on parole in 2014.
For the Mercedes-Benz, Prim allegedly has runners on the outside that the state claims assist him to collect the vehicles from unsuspecting owners. Prim is accused alongside these alleged runners, Clayton Bouwers and Robert Sass.
Last Friday, the three appeared at the Johannesburg specialised commercial crimes court, sitting in Palm Ridge, on charges linked to the January 2018 attempted theft of a Mercedes-Benz C63 from Rudolf Tuffet.
Tuffet had allegedly experienced bad service from the vehicle manufacturer, according to investigative documents from the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
The matter was postponed to 17 November because Bouwers’ lawyer was ill.
Prim has a history of using technology to commit crimes; he was convicted in 2018 for impersonating former NPA head Shaun Abrahams by using a spoofing device to clone Abrahams’ phone number. Prim then called prosecutors in his car theft case and instructed them to drop the charges against him.
According to the state, this is when Prim digitised and set up his operations in prison, even though he was moved to different correctional facilities, including one in Mangaung in the Free State. “There are more than five cases that Prim is being investigated for, the majority being from when he was locked up,” said a source close to the inquiry.
Prim’s alleged runners, Bouwers and Sass, go into character by wearing Mercedes-Benz clothing.
According to the NPA’s investigative notes, Tuffet had problems with his car that “could not be fixed by the various Mercedes-Benz dealerships to which he had taken the motor vehicle so that the problems could be fixed”. Tuffet expressed his unhappiness with the car company on social media sites “to get the full attention [of] Mercedes-Benz South Africa”.
On 10 January 2018, Tuffet allegedly received a call from a person who introduced himself as Shane and said he was calling from Mercedes-Benz South Africa’s head office.
“The person who called Rudolf Tuffet was accused three [Prim] and at the time when accused three made the phone call to Rudolf Tuffet, accused three was a detainee at Johannesburg Correctional Centre,” reads the investigative notes.
The alleged call was made from a telephone number that was “used by Mercedes Benz South Africa at the time, and accused three had manipulated the phone from which he made the call to Rudolf Tuffet to reflect a number that was allocated to Mercedes Benz South Africa by Telkom South Africa”.
The document added that after Tuffet received the call, he was called by Mercedes-Benz South Africa’s customer relations manager, who stated that the company did not have an employee named Shane. The company then enlisted the services of an investigator to look into the origins of “Shane’s” call to Tuffet.
On 12 January 2018, Prim called his associate, Bouwers, who is accused number one in the matter.
“The two of them agreed to misrepresent to Rudolf Tuffet that accused one was employed by Mercedes Benz South Africa and that they would collect the Mercedes Benz C63 motor vehicle from Rudolf Tuffet on the pretext that they were taking it to a Mercedes Benz dealership in Bryanston so that the motor vehicle could be fixed,” the state alleges.
Four days after the call between Prim and Bouwers, Bouwers and Sass went to a business park in Honeydew, Johannesburg, to “steal the Mercedes-Benz C63 from Rudolf Tuffet”. The two were arrested by the police during a sting operation.
“At the time when [Bouwers] was arrested, he was wearing a T-shirt and a cap that had Mercedes-Benz logos on them. When accused number one drove into the premises [in Honeydew], he signed in as ‘Richard’ and also misrepresented that he was from Mercedes-Benz.”
Prim is also being investigated for a separate matter, in which he allegedly came across a complaint from a Mercedes-Benz client who had ordered the GLC model with special features. The complainant did not receive the vehicle on time, and made this known on Hellopeter.
Investigators said Prim again used his spoofing technology to call the disgruntled client and ask for a R20 000 upfront payment to expedite the delivery of the car.
“The R20 000 was paid into the Capitec bank of Prim’s close relative. Prim is the head of a proper syndicate, and he is doing all his work from his prison cell,” said a source, who asked to remain anonymous. “Prim uses technology to commit his crimes, which is why his matter is being prosecuted by the Investigating Directorate.”
The Investigating Directorate is an NPA division specialising in intricate commercial crimes.
Strauss De Waal Attorneys, the law firm representing Prim, as well as Tshepo Makete, who handles communications on behalf of Mercedes-Benz South Africa, did not respond to the Mail & Guardian’s repeated requests for comment.
[/membership]