GEORGE NEWS - Luck ran out for former Ecentric Payment Systems employee Lucky Majangandile Erasmus (36) when he was sentenced to an effective five years’ direct imprisonment for cyber fraud, theft of data and attempted cyber extortion.
The sentence was handed down by the Western Cape Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on 3 June after Erasmus had entered into a plea agreement with the State. The total sentence was eight years, with three years suspended for five years.
Erasmus and his co-accused, Felix Unathi Pupu (43), also a former employee, unlawfully loaded software onto Ecentric Payment Solutions’ (a privately owned South African company specialising in payment processing and financial technology solutions) system, which allowed them remote access.
Some time later, an unknown person made contact with the company CEO, claiming to have compromised various aspects of the IT environment, and that they would be demanding a ransom. The first ransom demand came on 14 November 2023 when an amount of $534 260 (nearly R10m) was ordered to be paid within 16 hours.
The person claimed failure to make this payment would result in all the company data being published on multiple platforms within the following 30 hours, including those of their gateway competitors, stakeholders, the public and Ecentric’s regulators.
A second ransom demand was made little over two weeks later, on 30 November. This time the cyber swindlers upped the amount to $1m (about R18.75m) and threatened further action to prove the data breach.
While no ransom was paid by Ecentric, four of its retail clients suffered a combined loss of R794 808.51.
According to the Western Cape Hawks spokesperson, Warrant Officer Zinzi Hani, the accused faced 20 counts, including contravention of Section 12 of the Cybercrimes Act, theft of data, attempted cyber extortion, cyber fraud, unlawful accessing of a computer system, unlawful acts with the software of a hardware tool, unlawful interference with a network or data, unlawful interference with a data storage medium, resetting passwords and trespassing.
Erasmus, who has been in custody since 14 December 2023 (exactly a month after the fist ransom demand was made), was also declared unfit to poses a firearm. Meanwhile, his co-accused, who is also still in custody, is set to appear in the same court on 30 June for plea and sentencing.
South Africa’s Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020 is still relatively new as it was only signed into law by the president in May 2021, with certain key provisions only becoming operational in December that year.
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