Three Gweru men were each slapped with a three year jail term after were convicted of defrauding a local land developing firm of US$6 000.
The trio, Emmanuel Matondoro (41), Brighton Ndlovu (30) and Thabiso Mpofu (28) met their fate after magistrate Edwin Machera found them guilty of fraud.
One year was suspended on condition they restitute River Valley Properties US$6 000 before the 26th of this month.
Prosecutor Bernard Nyoni managed to prove his case beyond any reasonable doubt that the trio sold a residential stand in Woodlands Park 2 in Gweru to Mr Lazarus Vhengere in May last year without authority from the company after lying to the buyer that they owned the piece of land.
The matter came to light in August this year when the company discovered that there was a structure built on the stand without its authority.
This led to the three convicts being arrested and police made investigations which revealed that Vhengere had a forged copy of a Memorandum of Agreement of Sale and fake receipts.
Further investigations revealed that Matondoro originated a manual card and purchase offer form on which he forged Vhengere’s signature, purporting that he paid for the stand in monthly installments of $75 and $100 while in actual fact he had made a once off payment of US$6 000 for the stand.
