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Bulawayo Bureau

TWO brothers allegedly defrauded a gold dealer of US$70 000 after selling him a bag of sand that they pretended had made 7kg of an amalgam of gold and mercury.

Kudakwashe Pfavai (28) and Daniel Pfavai (29) allegedly lured Mr Phinias Munda to Shangani River to process the sand using mercury, resulting in what they said was 7kg of amalgam.

Kudakwashe and Daniel were released on $3 000 bail each by Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Martin Makonese with Kudakwashe ordered to report once a week at Chakari Police Station and Daniel at Norton CID.

The court was told that on November 14 last year at around 8am, the two brothers connived to lure Mr Munda from his house in Parklands suburb in Bulawayo to Shangani.

There they showed him a bag full of sand stashed inside the boot of their Mercedes Benz C200 and told Mr Munda the bag contained gold in the form of powder.

They asked Mr Munda to accompany them to Shangani River to watch them process the sand using mercury to produce gold. The sand, they claimed, produced 7kg of amalgam.

They test smelted a sample of 42,3 grammes of amalgam and got 14,1g of gold.

Mr Munda failed to notice that the sample which they had taken was allegedly switched by one of the brothers with a piece of real gold amalgam from his pocket.

From this sampling it was alleged that 7kg of amalgam would produce 2kg of gold after smelting. So Mr Munda paid the two men US$70 000 and left for his office to smelt the gold concentrate.

Upon smelting the 7kg of amalgam, Mr Munda discovered that he had been duped as the mixture didn’t contain any gold. He reported the matter to the police, leading to the two brothers’ arrest, but the money was not recovered.