EASTERN CAPE – The East London Regional Court sentenced three Uganda traditional healers to an accumulative thirteen years’ imprisonment for fraud and theft.
Jimmy Peter (27) and Mohamed (57) and Brian Kibirigue (32) executed a systematic process from January to August 2017, which entailed convincing a 63-year-old teacher from Lusikisiki to resign from her place of employment and to hand over her pension to them for a spiritual cleansing which would allegedly lead to her ancestors multiplying her money.
With the guidance of Wamubirigue, the 63-year-old then participated in a series of spiritual rituals which resulted in her resigning from work as she believed that her ancestors would multiply her pension to millions of rands. She then handed over R1.6 million of her pension money to the two men who then gave it to who then fled with the cash to Port Elizabeth.
Knowing that the pensioner still had more cash in her account she was instructed to withdraw the remaining R90 000. At the time members of the Commercial Crime Investigation were alerted by an informer about the crime which was about to take place and managed to stop the transaction and arrested Sellwuju and Wamubirigue as they were waiting outside the bank the handing it over to.
The Hawks then notified police in Port Elizabeth about Kibirigue and the latter arrested him while he was booking accommodation at a guesthouse. Fortunately, the police recovered the R1.6 million from him.
The East London Magistrate court denied bail for all three men, consequently, they have been in custody since August 2017. Sellwuju and Wamubirigue were each sentenced to six-years imprisonment while Kibirigue was sentenced to 12-months imprisonment for fraud and theft.
