A young attorney was arrested in Alberton on Thursday morning for her alleged involvement in fraudulent claims totalling R2-million from the Road Accident Fund (RAF).
Members of the elite Scorpions detective unit arrested her at her new home.
The Gauteng head of the unit, Gerhard Nel, said the woman, in her early thirties, would appear in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Friday on 10 counts of fraud involving an amount of between R140 000 and R196 000 each.
Scorpions detectives arrived at the suspect’s rented house shortly before dawn to arrest her. As they were waiting for sunrise to take her into custody, she allegedly slipped away, apparently by scaling a side fence.
One of her two children told detectives that their mother left home on Friday. However, her bed was still warm. A car dropped the woman off at the house about two hours later and she was arrested.
Nel said information leading to her arrest was obtained from an attorney who turned state witness as well as corroborative evidence provided by two RAF claim clerks who were recently convicted of fraud.
The woman allegedly filed false or inflated claims from the RAF between November 1998 and mid 2000.
”This is the first attorney we are grabbing and there are lots more to come. This is only the tip of the iceberg,” Nel said.
Nel said the attorney collaborated with RAF employees to make her fraudulent claims. RAF forensic investigator Paul Rautenbach worked with the Scorpions in the probe.
He said the fund had been losing about R300-million per year since 1999 because of fraudulent claims. -Sapa