Court overturns 15-year sentence in email scam case

When a farmer’s payment for timber poles vanished into the wrong bank account, someone had to answer for it. This week, the Pietermaritzburg High Court decided that someone was not Bongani Archibold Jele, overturning his fraud conviction and 15-year prison sentence in a case that shows how easily ordinary people can be swept into sophisticated email scams, and how demanding the standard of proof remains in South African courts.

The dispute began with an ordinary commercial transaction. Farmer David Stone wanted to build a shade-net structure on his Donnybrook farm to protect kiwi fruit he intended to grow. He obtained a quotation from Treated Timber Products (TTP) for timber poles and accepted an amended quotation in April 2021. After receiving an invoice by email, he transferred R709 333.41 on April 23, 2021.

The trouble surfaced only later. When TTP informed Stone that the payment had never reflected in its bank account, he discovered that the account number on his payment differed from the company’s banking details. The court heard that the fraud involved the interception of emails between Stone and TTP. The fraudster allegedly altered the invoice, replacing TTP’s banking details with another account number. The fraudster also allegedly intercepted Stone’s proof of payment and altered the reference so it appeared the money had landed in TTP’s correct account.

Evidence from First National Bank confirmed that the account on the altered invoice belonged to Jele. The bank also confirmed that he had opened the account, changed the cellphone number linked to it and obtained a replacement bank card. On that basis, Jele was convicted in the Ixopo Regional Court in November 2022, the money having been deposited into an account registered in his name.

Jele’s defence was that he had been an unwitting participant. He admitted opening the account but told the trial court that he had been persuaded by a person known as Ma-Africa to sell it to another person, Sheppard, for R500. According to Jele, Sheppard was allegedly a foreign national who could not legally open a bank account in South Africa. He said he initially became concerned about the arrangement and cancelled his first bank card, but later handed the replacement card to Sheppard after further persuasion by Ma-Africa.

By contrast with the trial court’s approach, the High Court found it had failed to properly consider Jele’s version before rejecting his defence. In a judgment delivered this week, Judge Rob Mossop, with Judge President Thoba Poyo-Dlwati concurring, said the State had relied primarily on the fact that the money was deposited into an account registered in Jele’s name. The judgment found that his explanation had not been disproved and remained reasonably possibly true.

The State itself conceded during the appeal that the fraud conviction could not stand. It considered an alternative conviction of theft but accepted that the evidence was insufficient to support that too. The High Court concluded that Jele’s guilt had not been established beyond reasonable doubt, substituted the conviction with a verdict of not guilty, and set aside both the conviction and the 15-year sentence.

For the public, the case is a reminder on two fronts. Business email compromise schemes can intercept routine correspondence and redirect large payments before anyone notices, leaving buyers and suppliers to absorb the loss. At the same time, the judgment underlines that an account holder whose name appears on a transaction is not automatically guilty, and that the State must disprove a reasonably possibly true explanation before a conviction can stand.

Whether the actual perpetrators of the R709 333.41 theft will ever be traced remains an open question, and one that leaves both Stone and TTP still bearing the loss.