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Noleen Makhurane Court Reporter
A BOGUS Lobels bakery agent swindled her neighbour of $54 claiming the money was for buying uniforms and securing employment at the bakery. Serial fraudster Siphiwe Chilufiya, 32, was earlier this year convicted on 30 counts of fraud after she teamed up with two women to swindle 75 people of an undisclosed amount of money.

The gang allegedly promised their victims employment at a restaurant they claimed was to be opened at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair. Chilufiya on Friday appeared before Magistrate Abednico Ndebele facing two counts of fraud.

Ndebele remanded Chilufiya to tomorrow for sentencing after she pleaded guilty to fraud. “I did take my neighbour’s money and promised her a job. I don’t know what came over me. I only realised after taking the money that I had done something wrong,” she said in her defence.

Prosecuting, Mufaro Mageza told the court that on October 25 at a house in Gwabalanda suburb, Chilufiya misrepresented herself as a Lobels Bakery agent and took $30 for Lobels uniforms from Sithabiso Masuku ,28.

Chilufiya, the court heard, took another $24 from Masuku on the next day claiming an establishment called Spairs hotel had been opened and she would use the money to secure a job for her. “Chilufiya and two other women had during a period in February and March this year claimed money from 75 people promising them jobs at a bogus ZITF restaurant,” Mageza said.

They told their victims to write the sizes of their uniforms and cellphone numbers at the back of photocopied national identity cards, the court heard.