Four men appeared in court on 7 July 2023, for their alleged involvement in ATM burglaries in the Thabo Mofutsanyana District.
Several cases were reported where ATMs were broken into with the use of a cutting torch.
These cases were assigned to the Provincial Serious and Violent Crimes Unit, which worked together with the FNB PCM team to investigate these crimes.
On Wednesday, 5 July 2023, they have received information about the movement of suspects who are allegedly responsible for the said crimes and that they arrived from Gauteng and will be operating in the Free State from Wednesday.
The team received information on Thursday morning at about 01:15 about a signal that the ATM at Marquard was tampered with.
Activation was done and the suspects fled the scene without gaining access to the bank; however, the strong steel door was already cut off with the use of a cutting torch.
With the assistance from Ficksburg Visible Policing Unit, the suspects were spotted on the R26, which is between Clocolan and Ficksburg.
The four men were arrested and found in possession of the equipment necessary to commit the crime at the ATMs.
Police confiscated a 9mm pistol, cutting torches, gloves, balaclavas, pipes, ropes, cellphones, an Isuzu bakkie, axes, masks, two way radios, pliers and cash.
The arrested suspects are from Mpumalanga and Gauteng and are linked with cases reported in Memel, Excelsior and Marquard.
All cases were reported as business burglaries at ATMs where cutting torches were used.
The suspects appeared on these four counts of business burglary as well as possession of burglary equipment in the Ficksburg Magistrate’s Court today. Simphiwe Mthethwa (41), Mike Mokoena (37), Mario Mashaba (49) and Khula Nicolas Ngogoto (53) will remain in custody until 19 July 2023 when they will apply for bail.
