Old photos circulate in hoax posts about cash scams in South Africa

Yahoo

31-07-2025

Posts shared in July 2025 claim to show police arresting South African men for using counterfeit money, in one case to pay women for sex and in another to settle a dowry. However, the claims are false, according to the police. The images in the posts were taken in connection with old cases that include a drugs bust and the arrest of a rape suspect.
'A 43 years old man was arrested for paying three young women with fake money after sleeping with them almost the whole night (sic),' reads a Facebook post published on July 12, 2025.
The post adds that 'Peter Mukwevho from Makhado Biaba, Venda lured three young women to spend a night with him'.
Makhado is a local municipality in South Africa's Limpopo province.
The post, shared more than 700 times, includes three photos: a man being arrested by officers from the South African Police Service (SAPS), a roll of what appear to be 100 rand notes, and counterfeit bills in the same denomination.
Similar claims were shared thousands of times on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X, as well as in Portuguese.
2019 case
A reverse image search of the first picture in the post leads to a SAPS statement published on December 6, 2019, related to an arrest in the Northern Cape province (archived here).
'Members of SAPS Crime Prevention in Hartswater arrested a 23-year-old suspect for being in possession of suspected drugs,' the statement reads.
Hartswater is about 900 kilometres from Makhado, the town named in the false posts.
AFP Fact Check could not source the original image of the rolled up cash bundle, but the photo of the loose counterfeit notes appeared in a 2019 community article warning residents about fake money scammers operating in Benoni, east of Johannesburg (archived here).
The recent false claim says the man was 'arrested for paying three young women with fake money after sleeping with them'.
Sex work is criminalised in South Africa, so its unlikely the purported victims in the claim would have reported this to the police (archived here).
A Google search for credible reports matching the details in the claim uncovered an unrelated case from 2022 involving extortion, fraud and corruption charges against a woman in the Eastern Cape (archived here).
Dowry hoax
The same Facebook account 'Koos de Klerk' is circulating another false claim about a Nigerian man who 'was arrested for paying R120 000 Lobola with fake money'. Lobola is a dowry.
'The parents of the bride noticed that the money is fake when they wanted to deposit it at the ATM (sic),' reads the post dated July 20, 2025.
The post features pictures of a man being arrested by a SAPS officer and two other pictures showing various South African banknotes on the ground next to a black plastic bag.
The claim has circulated tens of thousands of times on multiple platforms, including X, Instagram and Threads. It was also published by a Facebook account called 'Koos de Klerk Junior', which appears to be a backup for the 'Koos de Klerk' page.
However, the posts are false; a reverse image search revealed that the picture of the arrested suspect originates from a police statement published on June 23, 2015 (archived here).
'On Tuesday, 23 June 2015, police in Kimberley arrested a 46-year-old man at his house in Roodepan, suspected of committing rape,' the statement reads.
At the time, police suspected the man had committed and attempted rapes in the Northern Cape.
Separately, another online search revealed that the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) issued photos of the cash on the ground in a statement dated November 17, 2022 (archived here).
After a tip-off, JMPD arrested a 47-year-old Congolese male in possession of R63,000 (about $3,600) in counterfeit money in Berea.
The dowry story was recycled from a similar claim that AFP Fact Check debunked in 2024 when posts claimed an elderly woman was arrested for using counterfeit money she had received from her Nigerian future son-in-law.
Police at the time confirmed the tale was fabricated, and the image was from an unrelated raid in 2021.
Additionally, on July 28, 2025, police confirmed to AFP Fact Check that the two recent claims are false.
'In Limpopo, we do not have such cases,' spokesman for the provincial police, Malesela Ledwaba, wrote in a WhatsApp message.
While these claims are false, counterfeit crimes do occur in the country. A police statement from July 2025 reports that three men in Johannesburg were arrested for possessing and printing fake notes (archived here).