“This guy is a real monster,” says , executive director of the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service Manie van Schalkwyk about Karabo Phungula who fraudulently obtained the personal data of millions of South African.
was convicted in the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court, sitting in the Palm Ridge magistrate’s court last October, of fraudulently obtaining the personal data of millions of South Africans. It was found he had received a trove of personal and business data from data services firm“This guy is a real monster but I don’t think he realises that,” said Manie van Schalkwyk, executive director of the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service .
“He created untold chaos in thousands of consumers’ lives because he sold their data to people who used it to impersonate consumers and get into their accounts. He made it possible for that to happen.”“Of all the impersonation fraud committed in the three years from 2020 to 2022, 72% happened in 2020 - the year he got his hands on the personal data of millions of South Africans.”
Eight percent of impersonation crimes happened in 2021 and 20% in 2022, the year of the TransUnion breach. “A lot of people say they are not bothered by their information being compromised, because they don’t realise what fraudsters can accomplish with it,” Van Schalkwyk said. What they can do is use that information to open an account in your name or contact a company you already have a bank or cellphone account with and run up huge debt in your name. The term for that is contract takeover.
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