NetOne supervisor implicated in $500 million theft

Zvikomborero Parafini

A NetOne employee appeared in court yesterday after being implicated in the $500 million airtime scandal.

Jemima Karombe, who is employed as a supervisor, was not asked to plead when she appeared before regional magistrate Stanford Mambanje.

She was released unconditionally as she had been summoned to court hence bail issues didn’t arise.

The State alleged that on January 25, CID Commercial Crimes Division received a tip off that NetOne employees were supplying pin less credit airtime to dealers, who in turn sold it at a higher discount than the company.

Investigations revealed that Karombe instructed Faith Ndagura her subordinate and customer care representative responsible for selling pin less airtime, to give Khumbulani Nyapfumbi her username and password.

Her user ID was used to steal the pin-less airtime from NetOne.

Nyapfumbi allegedly gave the airtime to her accomplices Primrose Maireti, Faith Ndagurwa, Simbarashe Mandimutsira and James Mwanza, who appeared in court over the weekend.

A joint investigation was carried out and established that James Mwanza, a NetOne dealer, had received $50 000 000 transferred using the pin-less facility.

It is alleged that when interviewed, Mwanza implicated his employee Primrose Maireti, as the person who had sold him the pin-less airtime using NetOne’s *171# credit transfer channel.

NetOne verified all suspicious transactions and established that there were 75 transactions on pin-less airtime which was stolen from NetOne’s Smart System to NetOne line 0718 733 958 which is registered under the name, Samuel Njanji.

According to the State, $5 000 000 was sold on December 3 last year, $30 000 000 on December 5 and $20 000 000 the following day. About $203 000 000 was sold on December 20, while $307 999 964 was sold on January 19 this year.