Photo of cash in plastic bags falsely linked to recent arrest in South Africa
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 10, 2023 at 15:59
- 3 min read
- By Tendai DUBE, AFP South Africa
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“A 19 year old in Thohoyandou Venda was found with 1.9 million rands in cash inside transparent plastic bags this is after the hawks received a tip off (sic),” reads a tweet that has garnered hundreds of retweets and thousands of likes since June 29, 2023.
The picture in the tweet shows bundles of rand notes in a plastic bag on the floor.
The claim was also shared here, here and here (archived here, here and here).
But while the details of the recent arrest were mostly accurate, the photo is old and unrelated to the incident.
2023 search and seizure
On June 27, 2023, Nedzanani Vhugala Thivhilaeli was arrested after a joint search and seizure operation led by Thohoyandou-based Hawks' Serious Organised Crime Investigation and other crime intelligence units in Limpopo.
“The team recovered three plastic bags containing cash amounting to over R1,6 million. The suspect was immediately arrested and the recovered money was seized by the Hawks,” South African police said in a statement (archived here).
South Africa’s Hawks are an elite police unit that investigates organised crime, economic crime and corruption.
The misleading posts embellished details, including that the plastic bag containing the money was clear. But the police statement did not provide that information, saying only that three bags with money had been recovered.
The posts also claim the 19-year-old was arrested in Thohoyandou when in fact it happened more than 40 kilometres away in Vuwani.
2018 airport bust
A reverse image search led to the picture included in a police statement dated May 5, 2018, reporting the arrest of a 27-year-old man with US and South African currency worth R6.9 million at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg (archived).
The search also showed that local media have used the picture for illustrative purposes, as seen here in March 2023 (archived), crediting it as a stock photo.
The case against Thivhilaeli was postponed to July 7, 2023, for a bail application. The investigation continues.
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