ONE of Zimbabwe’s largest cellular network providers, NetOne (Pvt) Limited has reported two men from Kambuzuma, Harare, for allegedly hacking into its system and stealing more than ZiG1 million last month during the change-over from Zimdollar to ZiG.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe recently ditched the Zimdollar for the ZiG after the former had been decimated by hyper-inflation.
For allegedly harvesting where they did not sow, Martin Learnmore Gona (31) and Uwen Gonyora (34) spent the weekend in police cells following their arrest on charges of fraud and money-laundering.
On Monday, they appeared before magistrate Dennis Mangosi, who remanded them in custody to today for bail hearing.
NetOne was represented by its regional loss control officer Takaitei Chitekwe.
Prosecutor Thomas Chanakira alleged that Gona and Gonyora connived and hacked into NetOne One Money wallet where they fraudulently transferred ZiG1 119 438 as phantom money to the former’s bank account.
They reportedly exploited a glitch that occurred on the NetOne OneMoney system during the ZWL$ to ZiG transition last month.
The State further submitted that the phantom money was then processed through Electronic Funds Transfer Corporation Zimbabwe, ZimSwitch and EcoCash being funded by NetOne Cellular OneMoney escrow account.
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Gona and Gonyora allegedly made 545 transactions using the same method.
The court also heard that after making the fraudulent transactions, NetOne OneMoney account’s funds were depleted, leading to the bank settling the transactions.
Gona and Gonyora allegedly further converted the proceeds to assets which are yet to be recovered, and only ZiG695 940 was recovered.
