36 years old, Karabo Phungula appeared in the Palm Ridge Specialised commercial Crimes court yesterday on charges of fraud and contravention of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act.

This followed consequent to his arrest earlier yesterday morning by the Hawks’ Serious Commercial crime Investigation in Gauteng following investigation into the data breach at Epxerian in August 2020.

It is alleged that Experian entered into a contract with the suspect who purported to be a certain Tebogo Mogashoa, a director of Talis Holdings. The agreement gave the person access to the personal information held by the credit bureau of millions of people.  The suspect then proceeded to download approximately 23 million personal data records and 727000 business records. The suspect then attempted to sell these records at about R4.2 million.

Phungula will be appearing again in the same court on 29 October 2021 after he was granted R3 000-00 bail.

Source: South African Police Service