KAROI — A suspected con-artist has been arrested after misrepresenting to a group of 40 Zanu PF supporters in Nyamakate, Hurungwe district, that he was an agent for a cotton company and almost swindled them of cash.
OWN CORRESPONDENT Police said the suspected fraudster Joseph Chigwedere was arrested on allegations of fraud on November 30 in Makuti in the Zambezi Valley.
Mashonaland West police spokesperson Inspector Clemence Mabgweazara yesterday confirmed the incident.
Chigwedere reportedly went to the business centre where a Zanu PF ward meeting was being addressed by the local councillor and informed the gathering he was an employee of FARDE Cotton Company based in Gokwe.
The accused, police said, lied that the company provided farming inputs in the form of soyabean seed and fertilizers at zero deposit and beneficiaries would repay after harvesting. Chigwedere told vilagers that interested people were required to pay $5 each as registration and transport fees.
“Some 40 villagers paid $5 each and during the process, a police patrol team arrived at the meeting. Police found people paying registration fees to the wife of a local Arex extension officer Esnath Garavaziva who implicated the accused,” Mabwgweazara said.
Chigwedere later allegedly confessed that he was a con artist, adding that the cotton company he claimed to represent was non-existent.
