A HARARE man has been dragged to court facing charges of fraud after he intentionally hatched a plan to steal from the complainant, leading the latter to suffer prejudice of ZWL44 000. 00.
Tinashe Karimanzira (29) appeared before a Harare magistrate Leanmore Mapiye and was released on ZWL300 bail coupled with stringent reporting conditions.
Apart from the stringent reporting conditions, Karimanzira was told to surrender his passport and continue residing at his given address until finalisation of the matter.
The matter was remanded to October 29.
Prosecuting, Sebastian Mutizirwa said in February, Karimanzira sent a message on a WhatsApp group, indicating that he was selling an EcoCash agent line. One Micah Ndarimani got interested. Karimanzira explained to Ndarimani that he also had the capacity to assist her obtain an agent line, registered in her name from Econet.
The State also heard that Ndarimani gave Karimanzira all the necessary documents, which Karimanzira used and obtained an agent line. Karimanzira went further and obtained an agent line for himself using Ndarimani’s particulars.
Further, on February 21, Karimanzira sold the second agent line to the complainant for ZWL$500, with the complainant then deciding to use the agent line for his day-to-day EcoCash transactions until the EcoCash balance reached ZWL88 000. 00.
On september 3, Karimanzira hatched a plan to steal from the complainant’s agent line that he had sold him. In pursuit of that, Karimanzira went to Econet Zimbabwe and misrepresented that he had lost his agent line and wanted a replacement, which he successfully did.
Karimanzira was able to get a replacement of the purportedly lost agent line, thereby blocking the original. With the replaced agent line now in his possession,, karimanzira withdrew a total of ZWL44 000 00 from the agent line.
Upon realising that his agent line was his agent line was not showing network, Ndarimani reported the matter to an Econet shop and lastly to the police, leading to the arrest of the accused.
