A man who may have been the victim of a money scam was arrested by police outside the United States embassy in Pretoria on Thursday.
The man, who is in his early 40s and who was initially reported to have been planning an attack on the embassy, was praying and chanting across the street from the embassy when police were alerted.
”We were called and told that the suspect was outside the US embassy. We tried to apprehend him and he got into his minibus taxi and escaped,” Inspector Paul Ramakolo told the Mail & Guardian Online.
The man was later arrested on the corner of Esselen and Jeppe streets in Sunnyside, central Pretoria. Ramakolo said that police found a safe filled with black money-sized paper and a liquid chemical in his minibus.
”The liquid turned out to be raspberry [juice] but the suspect believes that the liquid is used to clean the black paper and make it into ‘US dollars’,” he said.
The US embassy’s spokesperson Sharon Hudfon-Dan told the M&G Online that the man was not arrested for praying outside the embassy, as reported by the South African Press Association earlier on.
”We don’t have the exact information as to why the man was arrested and there were no suggestions made on our part that he was planning an attack on us,” she said, adding that the embassy believed that the suspect was a victim of a money scam.
Ann Ramon, of the US secret service, told the M&G Online that so-called black money scams are as prevalent in South Africa as in other countries around the world.
”What happens in these scams is that people are told to buy black paper that is cut to the size of US dollars and then put some chemical on to them, and then they will turn into dollars,” she said. ”Sometimes the victims are told to go to the US embassy to collect the chemical that cleans the black ink off the paper, and I think that that is the case with this man [the suspect].”
Ramakolo said a case of money laundering has been opened. ”We are still going to investigate the case and we will take this black paper to the laboratory so we can find out what it really is,” he said.
The suspect, who is in police custody at the Sunnyside police station, will appear in court in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Monday.