A South African woman will serve five years in jail for spending money that was sent to her mistakenly.
Sibongile Mani, was found guilty of theft for spending a huge sum of the money that she received by mistake.
Mani is said to have received $1 million in 2017 while she was a student at Walter Sisulu University.
The money was credited to her account by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) yet she was only supposed to receive $ 20,370.
Instead of reporting the mistake to the relevant authorities, the woman immediately went on a spending spree, purchasing expensive things for herself.
According to reports, she started using the money within 2 hours of receiving it. She bought herself human hair, a phone, drinks, gift cards, a mattress among other flashy items.
By the time her account was frozen, Mani had spent up to $70,000, in 48 different places within 73 days.
The court established that she had used a lot of money in a day in the whole country
“The only sentence that is appropriate is direct imprisonment, and you are therefore sentenced to a term of five years’ imprisonment,” the judge ruled and further said that the court considered that the woman was a first time offender.
Mani’s defence team requested the court not to end her bright future by sentencing her to jail but the judge responded saying, “”You, and only yourself, made that decision on 1 June 2017, you did so repeatedly, for 73 consecutive days, numerous times per day. You were rushing against time to spend the maximum amount before it’s spoiled or brought to [an end]. Those were conscious decisions you took every day, not the court.”
The court further said that a lot of students would have been affected if Intellimall, the company that distributed the funds to NSFAS, would not have paid the man that the convict used.
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