[imagesource:instagram/drpashy]

New details are emerging of just how deep Thabo Bester’s scamming and swindling went, even while he was locked behind bars.

Dr Mmereka Patience Martha Ntshani, also known as ‘Dr Pashy’, the woman whose identity was apparently stolen by Dr Nandipha Magudumana, the girlfriend of convicted rapist and murderer Thabo Bester, has provided police with new evidence of how Bester’s escape may have been funded.

Dr Pashy is alleging that Thabo, who claimed to be US-based businessman TK Nkwana, had asked her to fork out a couple of million to have Oprah Winfrey over for a women’s empowerment event.

In the exclusive SABC interview, Dr Pashy says Thabo claimed to be in a “big meeting” with Winfrey’s representatives over ticket sales for a fake women empowerment conference on the day of his escape and now suspects that the “millions” she sunk into that conference were actually used to fund his prison break shenanigans. The state alleges that Magudumana and Bester paid prison officials thousands of rand (one was apparently given up to R5 million) to actively assist him in evading justice for his crimes.

Speaking on Ntshani’s behalf, her lawyer Sentebale Makara told News24: “Dr Pashy is alive to the fact that TK Nkwana (Thabo Bester) seemingly had resources and continues to believe that her life is under threat. However, [she] refuses to grant Nandipha and Thabo power over her life; and implores the relevant authorities to guarantee the safety of victims and the public at large. What we now know is that they were capable of perpetrating crimes while Thabo was allegedly incarcerated.”

Dr Pashy continued:

“They… promised that they can bring the likes of Oprah Winfrey to be at, like, your conferences, your woman empowerment conferences. I agreed to that, looking at the fact that Oprah Winfrey is a woman that inspires me the most,” she said, before revealing that she had transferred millions of rands to one of Magudumana’s companies, in the belief it would pay for a private jet for Winfrey.

Ntshani also revealed that she had received “signed contracts” from what she was told was “Oprah Winfrey’s Network”, as well as “signed contracts by the Oprah Winfrey management”, during the alleged scam. These documents have been provided to the authorities.

Dr Pashy is one of the only alleged victims to have actually laid charges in relation to some of Thabo’s devastating scams, while other victims are out there “crying in the corner”:

Referring to the online abuse she received after Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi falsely claimed she’d made contradictory statements about her passports, which were found in Magudumana’s possession, Ntshani added:

“I’m not the only doctor [who was scammed], but people cannot come out because of what has happened to me, because I received that digital mob justice. Nobody wants that for themselves. They’d rather stay in the corner and just recover and cry in their corner.”

Businesswoman Phumudzo Thenga, claimed that she had also been scammed by Bester in 2018, but decided not to lay charges, saying that “I decided to walk away. Painful as it is, I simply wrote off the loss”.

Meanwhile, Dr Gérard Labuschagne, a clinical psychologist and former brigadier of the SAPS Investigative Psychology Section, who interviewed the convicted murderer during his sentencing in 2011, also revealed some telling information about the high-flying con artist.

His records show how Bester confessed to an eerily similar fraud more than a decade before he and Magudumana allegedly scammed Ntshani and Thenga:

In that interview, Bester told Labuschagne that his exposure to the lavish lifestyles of Sandton’s wealthy residents made him fantasise about becoming a multimillionaire.

He “overdreamed”, he told the psychologist, and could not separate his fantasy of wealth from his reality as an impoverished and uneducated young man with a record as a violent criminal and fraudster.

Thabo also detailed how he pretended to be an MTV representative once, who wanted to host a concert at a Soweto club, which obviously went balls-up. That didn’t stop him from portraying himself as “Tom Motsepe”, the New York-based chairperson of 21st Century Media, and relative to Patrice Motsepe, to pull Thenga into his clutches.

Over a year after beginning his relationship with Magudumana in May 2017, Bester pretended to virtually attend the glitzy launch of 21st Century Media from New York, while actually video calling from his prison cell.

Eventually, Thenga found out and in March publicly accused him of scamming her into creating 21st Century Media and becoming its director.

Labuschagne said that Thabo is a “very intelligent, professional conman, who is highly manipulative and believes people are there to serve his will and be cast aside once he is done with them”.

Indeed, the con man cried and performed as soon as Thenga asked him why he had put her in “this financial predicament” and she never got her money back.

What a terrifying person to have in our midst.

[source:news24]