The Pretoria High Court has sentenced three staffers of SBV – the trusted and preferred partner of the banking industry – to 30 years in prison each for a cash-in-transit heist.
The court found that the head of department SBV logistics, Watloo Cash Centre, Henrico Fourie, recruited and conspired with two other SBV employees – Lazarus Ntlatleng, a crew member, and David Tolo to rob an SBV truck along the N4 freeway.
One of the accused – Bekithemba Patrick Mbanjwa, who was out on bail failed to appear in court.
A warrant of arrest for Mbanjwa has since been issued.
The court heard how the SBV staffers turned into armed robbers and pounced on an SBV truck headed for Pretoria, just outside Bronkhorspruitria.
The gang of insiders and two others comprising 39-year-old Fourie, 30-year-old Mbuyani, 48-year-old Maseko, and 28-year-old Lazarus Ntlatleng, rammed and bombed the SBV truck before they made off with more than R25 million in cash.
The robbery was a case of third time lucky.
The court heard that the gang had tried on two previous occasions to rob an SBV armered vehicle but had been foiled.
Their first attempt on 27 December 2019, but it failed simply because the gang couldn’t get hold of explosives.
Their second attempt was on 3 January 2020. Again it failed, this time because the gang couldn’t find a suitable vehicle to ram an SBV armoured vehicle off the road.
They had also noticed a high presence of police along the N4 freeway.
The gang finally carried out the attack and succeeded on their third attempt on 7 January 2020.
On that day, the gang used a Mercedes Benz to ram the SBV armoured vehicle off the road in their staged cash-in-transit armed robbery.
When the cash-in-transit van came to a stop the accused fired shots, Tolo and Ntlatleng were told to exit the truck, and explosives were used to cause an explosion.
However, the inside job was later exposed when the driver Tolo turned state witness and spilled the beans.
Judge Bert Bam, convicted all the accused of robbery with aggravation circumstances, causing an explosion, conspiracy to commit an offence, possession of an unlawful firearm, and possession of unlawful ammunition.
The judge sentenced four of the accused – Fourie, Mbuyani, Maseko, and Ntlatleng – to 30 years in prison each.
However, Tolo was granted amnesty.
The court also ordered that the accused should jointly, and severally compensate SBV for the loss.
