South Africa: ‘Fake doctor’ arrested on fifth day of manhunt after escaping custody

Authorities in South Africa launched a manhunt for a suspect who escaped custody after he was arrested for swindling people of their monies “by misrepresenting himself as a doctor or a pharmacist.”

According to the BBC, the suspect went by the name of Dr Kingsley Chele or Dr KJ Ncube. Police in a statement said the suspect’s modus operandi involved establishing contact with “health professionals on Facebook and engaging them, pretending to seek investors while he swindled them out of thousands of rands for projects that did not exist.”

The suspect was ultimately arrested on October 2 after he was reported for fraud. He was also denied bail by the Pretoria Magistrates’ Court and remanded in custody until his next appearance on October 17.

“The investigating officer of the case roped in the asset forfeiture unit to assist in attaching the accused property that is believed to have been accumulated as proceeds of crime, including a 2023 VW Golf GTI,” police said in the statement.

But he is said to have escaped from custody on October 11 “when the police were cataloguing his household items at his residence”. The police subsequently asked anyone who knows where he’s hiding to contact them.

The suspect was rearrested in Vosloorus, Gauteng in the early hours of Monday, 16 October 2023. South African police said a charge of escaping from lawful custody would be added to the charges that he was already facing.