The Hawks have arrested Liesel Maria Wolmarans, a former Eskom employee. She has been arrested for electricity billing fraud amounting to R11 million. Following her arrest, the 44-year-old woman appeared in the Gqeberha specialised commercial crime court on Friday, 29 July 2022.
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According to Captain Yolisa Mgolodela, spokesperson for the directorate, Wolmarans was a senior billing clerk at Eskom between March 2011 and May 2021. Mgolodela also confirmed that Wolmarans was responsible for processing electricity meter readings on the billing system. He explained that the readings were captured by route contractors at customer sites on a hand-held device and forwarded to Wolmarans electronically.
In addition, the former Eskom employee had to bill the customers for the electricity usage in accordance with the readings but she misused her access to the billing system. She reportedly, processed false readings on the billing system, whereby customers were billed for lower electricity usage, according to the Hawks commercial crime investigation team.
“The matter was reported to the Hawks for probing hence the arrest of Wolmarans on July 29. The investigations revealed that Wolmarans prejudiced Eskom cash to the value of more than R11m,”Mgolodela said.
As per TimesLIVE, the accused was released on R2 000 bail but the case was postponed to 30 August 2022.
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