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An unholy trio committed an unforgivable crime in an attempt to claim life insurance money.

A pastor, his wife, and his cousin are responsible for the brutal murder of a young woman in their congregation, Hlompho Koloi, who had been on her way to a job interview in 2018.

Shortly after the murder, Pastor Melisizwe Monqo of ‘God’s Work International Ministries’ in the Eastern Cape, phoned in to claim the insurance money, pretending to be the boyfriend of Koloi, TimesLIVE reported.

In the recorded telephone call, the life insurer asked Monqo how Koloi had died, to which the pastor brazenly answered, “She was murdered. She was robbed and killed.”

After some investigating, it was revealed that Monqo’s wife, Siphosihle Pamba, had taken out a R3 million life insurance policy on Koloi (without her knowledge) and pastor Monqo and his cousin Phumlani Qhusheka had committed the murder in an attempt to benefit from it.

The investigation led to the discovery of multiple other life insurance policies taken out by the trio on loyal members of their congregation, who had no idea that this had taken place.

The total of all these life insurance policies came to around R27 million.

The trio’s ruthless scamming resulted in them being sentenced to a combined 335 years behind bars for murder and fraud.

TimesLIVE has the exclusive audio recordings of the telephone calls, which were used as evidence against them, along with some other gruelling details of the crime:

[source:timeslive]