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Senior Court Reporter
A FORMER Econet Wireless employee appeared in court on allegations of duping people of various amounts in rechargeable airtime he would reverse back into his account after people had purchased from him through Ecocash.

Christopher Nyamugafata, of Glen View 2 in Harare, appeared at the Harare Magistrates Court charged with fraud.

Nyamugafata was not asked to plead to the charges when he appeared before magistrate Mrs Yeukai Dzuda, who remanded him to February 18.

The State led by Mr Thomas Chanakira alleges that in November 2019 Nyamugafata was employed by Econet Wireless Zimbabwe as an independent contractor in the customer care department.

His duties among others included receiving call and internet queries from Econet customers on Ecocash transaction queries and forward them to the relevant office for Ecocash reversals.

At one point, Ecocash queries increased resulting in Nyamugafata being entrusted with one supervisor’s access credentials to facilitate Ecocash reversals for that period, according to the State.

Sometime in November 2021, Nyamugafata allegedly decided to fraudulently use his supervisor’s credentials to defraud Econet and he then bought 12 SIM cards, which he was now using for Ecocash airtime purchase reversals.

The court heard that from November 2021 to January this year, Nyamugafata approached different Econet line users advertising and selling airtime using his 12 Ecocash accounts.

On all his transactions, Nyamugafata would use his SIMs to purchase airtime for his customers using his Ecocash.