Post Office and Postbank denounces Pravda report on SASSA card fraud

19 September 2019

SAPO and Postbank would like to distance ourselves in the strongest possible terms from the sensationalist tone of the report by Pravda labelling the fraud on the SASSA cards as a ‘catastrophic event’. 

The facts of the matter are as follows:

Postbank has indeed been experiencing a situation commencing in January 2019 where the contactless function of a few SASSA cards was used to fraudulently withdraw cash below the R200 industry limit in an off-line environment.

Contrary to the aforementioned report, less than 250 cards from a specific batch of cards that were reported stolen from a SAPO branch are involved in the fraud.  In line with industry standards and practice, these cards were duly blocked on Postbank’s systems, but due to the off-line nature of the fraud, incidents continued for some time.

To date the following arrests have been made:

- At Ivory Park, 11 suspects have been arrested and 233 cards were recovered.

- Following the Ivory Park arrest of 11 suspects, on 8 August 2019 a further 4 arrests were made at Gallow Manor, Greenstone and Fourways which are linked to fraudulent activities in the whole of the East Rand, Vereeniging, Vanderbijl Park, West Rand, Centurion and Pretoria areas.

- In total, 22 arrests on different cases have been made in relation to this matter.

- SAPO’s forensic team are continuing investigations in collaboration with SAPS. 

It can be categorically stated that neither SASSA nor any beneficiary have been compromised in any way whatsoever due to this incident.

Postbank has been working closely with the SA Reserve Bank, Payment Association of South Africa and the industry to combat the fraud. Currently the threshold on off-line contactless transactions has been set to R0.00 forcing all contactless transactions on-line and thus preventing any further fraudulent activities.

Postbank, in collaboration with the Reserve Bank and the industry are continuing investigations into the matter while developing solutions to permanently eliminate the fraud.

SAPO and Postbank assures SASSA beneficiaries that we have their best interest at heart and their accounts and social grant monies are safe in our custody as they are not exposed to any form of undue risk.

Issued by Johan Kruger, Communications Division, SA Post Office, 19 September 2019