NetOne employee steals $150 million, buys luxury vehicles

State-owned mobile network operator NetOne was defrauded of ZWL$150 million by an employee in an airtime voucher scam according to a report by The Herald. The heist was staged by a cashier who was identified as Daniel Kalira, and was found out after the Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission conducted an investigation in August last year which reveal that the accused illegally shipped airtime vouchers amounting to ZWL$7,990,000.

“Investigations conducted by ZACC show that on August 25, 2021, the accused allegedly falsified issue voucher number 77064 where he indicated that he dispatched 17 400 airtime cards of $100 each. Instead, Kalira had allegedly dispatched 80 300 cards valued at $100 each depriving NetOne of $7 990 000.”

Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission (via The Herald)

Another transaction was found by the ZACC which amounted to ZWL$2,250,000 in January of this year.

According to the report, this scam went on for more than two years and the money stolen was reportedly used to buy several luxury vehicles which included a Toyota Hilux GD-6, three Mercedes Benz and two BMW sedans. The cars stolen were said to now be in the hands of the authorities.

“All the vehicles were recovered by ZACC investigators. It is alleged that from January 2020 to May 23, 2022, Kalira stole airtime from NetOne by falsifying his sales of airtime on the stock issue vouchers which he dispatched to NetOne sales agents,”

Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission (via The Herald)

It appears that the ZWL$150 million might just be an estimate at this point because investigations are still ongoing about just how much the NetOne employee made off with in this airtime voucher racket.

Yet another airtime voucher scam in the telecoms sector

It looks like airtime vouchers are ripe for abuse because in March this year Econet Wireless Zimbabwe suffered something similar after employees were sentenced to a combined nine years for defrauding the company of ZWL$20 million via juice cards.

All this might just suggest that the RBZ was onto something when it issued a directive for mobile network operators to downscale the production of physical airtime vouchers. This isn’t to say that digital sales are any safer but with two cases of large sums being funnelled through juice cards for extracurricular activities, they are now a genuine problem. And we can’t forget that there are USD variants of these juice cards now on the market which just adds to the whole mess…