By Kotie Geldenhuys
Photos courtesy of Pixabay and Freepik
When Lerato Patricia Mufamadi, a former executive administrator at MMG South Africa (Pty) Ltd, began diverting company funds into her personal and unidentified bank accounts, no one suspected the extent of her actions. Tasked with managing petty cash and processing company invoices, Mufamadi instead manipulated supplier payments and orchestrated a complex fraud that would cost the company a staggering R15 million. Her crimes eventually led to her arrest by the Hawks’s Serious Commercial Crime Investigation team and a landmark conviction. On 6 May 2024, the Palm Ridge Specialised Commercial Crimes Court sentenced her to a cumulative 291 years’ incarceration, although she will only serve 18 years effectively. But behind such headlines lies a pressing question: Who provides the intelligence, who investigates financial crime like this and how are such intricate cases brought to justice? (SAPS, 2024).
Commercial and financial crimes have various forms, including bank and card fraud; global cybercrime networks perpetrating financial crime through their scams; as well as Ponzi and pyramid schemes. They also include procurement corruption, such as tender fraud within State-owned enterprises and municipalities, and State capture-related offences, where networks of government officials and private companies collude for profit.
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[This is only an extract of an article published in Servamus: November 2025. This article is available for purchase.]