Former Home Affairs official convicted of fraud and corruption

A former Home Affairs official has been convicted of nine counts of fraud and two of contravening the Births and Deaths Registration Act in that she had fraudulently opened funeral policies on behalf of clients by using their identity numbers and adding herself as a beneficiary.

Home Affairs Minister, Dr Leon Schreiber welcomed the conviction.

Dawn Pieterson was formerly employed at the Department of Home Affairs office in Calvinia in the Northern Cape, where she abused her access to departmental records to commit fraud and corruption between February 2019 and September 2022.

Schreiber’s office revealed that she did this by opening funeral policies on clients’ identity numbers, nominating herself as the beneficiary, then falsely declaring the holders of the ID numbers as deceased in order to access the payouts.

The Department will continue to monitor this case as Pieterson is scheduled to be sentenced on  January 26 next year, his office said.

Minister Schreiber said: “This latest successful conviction is another step forward in our ongoing work to clean up Home Affairs.

“It is the ninth conviction secured through the collaboration between the Department and law enforcement agencies. It also follows the dismissal of 37 officials since July 2024. I applaud the

Department’s Counter Corruption unit for this conviction, as well as our partners in the Hawks and other entities.”

Minister Schreiber said the modus operandi used in the case confirmed the fundamental importance of Home Affairs digital transformation agenda.

"By fully automating and digitalising all departmental processes, as we are doing through the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) for visas and through Digital ID for civics services, we will eliminate the space for human discretion and interference exploited by criminals like Pieterson," he added.

"We are absolutely determined to both put criminal officials behind bars, while simultaneously using technology to close the loopholes they exploit. This is how we can defeat the scourge of corruption once and for all.”

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