Student Goes On Spending Spree & Now Faces Jail After University Sent Her £850,000 In Bank Error
A Student who went on a massive spending spree after she received a staggering £850,000 instead of her usual £85 monthly university food grant could face up to 15 years in jail.
Sibongile Mani, 27, who was on benefits to allow her to study, faces criminal charges of fraud and theft after she splurged the cash in 73 days after the blunder.
The accountancy student, who is at the Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, South Africa, gets £85 each month put into her bank account in food and book allowances.
But instead the company that administers the financial aid allowances at the university called Intellimali fouled up and sent £850,000 in cash to the hard up student.
In a Facebook post Sibongile claimed she had reported the error to the authorities.
She said: “Today my personal life has become a social media scandal. I have been named and shamed in public. Today, I am a bad person, a person who stole the money of students.
“With that being said, and being named a thief, but as we all know in every story there is truth and there are lies with the very same story”.
She said she was not denying anything but would tell her side later but she has fled the campus and gone into hiding and shut down her Facebook page.
Student leader Sibongile, who has shown no remorse despite facing possible jail, told the Daily Daily Dispatch: “It is very clear that I didn’t make the error”.
Sibongile was said to have undergone a Cinderella like transformation overnight after the cash blunder.
Eyebrows were raised initially when her neat corn-row hairstyle was replaced with £180-a-time Peruvian weaves and she began wearing designer outfits and bought a brand new i-phone 7.
Sibongile Mani went on a staggering spending spree after she was accidentally given £850,000 instead of £85 for her student maintenance
She began flashing the cash kitting out her closest friends with new outfits and drinking £50-a-time bottles of whisky and jetting herself and her pals round the country to wild parties.
Suspicions grew when a till receipt from a local SPAR shop was leaked showing that she he had £810,000 in her account and her wild spending became more lavish and talked about.
She was finally outed by Samkelo Mqhayi, deputy branch secretary of the South African Students Congress (SASCO), who reported her to the National Students’ Financial Aids Scheme.
He told Herald Live: “She threw surprise birthday parties for her friends and showered them with expensive gifts and flew them to events where she bought the best seats.
“When the SPAR receipt was leaked showing a balance of R13.6-million (£810,000) in her account I called NSFAS and they checked their records and confirmed that the initial amount was R14-million (£850,000)”.
By the time they reigned her in after her two-and-a-half-month spending spree they discovered she had been blowing £666 a day which is a staggering amount in South Africa.
The total missing from the account is £50,000.
A fellow student said: “She went from a hard up, humdrum run-of-the-mill student to one who was leading a lavish lifestyle and seemed to have no bottom to her purse and lived the high life.
“She became very glamorous in beautiful dresses with all the accessories and we thought she must have won the Lottery. She must have thought she had won it too when she got that cash!”.
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