SA electricity thieves found guilty on 16,451 counts
A court in Johannesburg has ruled in favour of Eskom, handing down a guilty verdict on four individuals accused of theft, including a mother and son duo.
The four, who collectively faced over 36,000 charges related to electricity theft, were found guilty on 16,451 counts.
The two main suspects, the mother and son, were arrested in December 2012 when they were found in possession of a stolen Credit Dispensing Unit (CDU), a machine belonging to Eskom that prints out prepaid electricity vouchers.
Also recovered from the suspects premises was a hard drive belonging to another stolen CDU machine, numerous customer lists, including electricity meter numbers, 996 illegal prepaid electricity vouchers of varying value as well as other equipment used for printing prepaid electricity vouchers.
Two additional suspects were also found in possession of customer lists, meter numbers and illegal prepaid vouchers.
Richard De Nobrega, Senior Adviser for Eskom Security Investigations, said: “Eskom loses billions each year to electricity theft…To recover the money that is lost by the power utility due to electricity theft, including illegal connections, meter tampering and bypassing and the selling of illegal prepaid vouchers, Eskom is forced to increase the price of electricity, which ultimately affects legal electricity users in the form of increased tariffs.”
Sentencing has been scheduled for the 3rd of February 2017.
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