A South African student has been exposed for having received a whopping sum of £850,000 which was mistakenly paid into her account instead of the usual £85 monthly university food grant.
The University student identified as Sibongile Mani, 27, studying accountancy is in hot waters after failing to report the erroneous transfer and proceeding to spend lavishly from the money.
The University student was reported to have gone on a massive 73 day spending spree with her friends after receiving the error transaction.
The Student leader, Sibongile, a student of Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, South Africa, was reported to have been erroneously paid the whopping sum by a company handling the food allowance payment process, Intellimali.
Sibongile was reported to have started living lavish after she got the money into her account, spending £180-a-time on Peruvian weaves and purchasing designer wears.
At some point, she was reported to have flashed £50-a-time bottles of whisky along with her friends on lavish time outs and also flew them to places on booked private jets.
The University student was however caught after a receipt from one of her night outs which she posted online showed that she had more than £800,000 in her account, explaining the reason behind her most recently acquired expensive taste.
She was outed by one Samkelo Mqhayi, a deputy branch secretary of the South African Students Congress (SASCO), who reported her case to the National Students’ Financial Aids Scheme.
Samkelo told Herald Live: “She threw surprise birthday parties for her friends and showered them with expensive gifts and flew them to events where she bought the best seats.
“When the SPAR receipt was leaked showing a balance of R13.6-million in her account I called NSFAS and they checked their records and confirmed that the initial amount was R14-million”.
The erroneous transaction was discovered two and a half months after the payment was made and she was reported to have spent about £666 a day totaling about £50,000.
One of the students in the University said: “She went from a hard up, humdrum run-of-the-mill student to one who was leading a lavish lifestyle and seemed to have no bottom to her purse and lived the high life.
“She became very glamorous in beautiful dresses with all the accessories and we thought she must have won the Lottery.
“She must have thought she had won it too when she got that cash.”
The SASCO branch chairman, Zolile Zamisa, while speaking to news source noted: “We are shocked. Not so long ago we were protesting for thousands of students who were left without funding due to fund shortages.
“Yet she was living a lavish lifestyle hosting birthday parties for her friends at up-market champagne clubs and other expensive hangouts. This cannot be allowed to happen again.”
Mani had in a Facebook message on her wall claimed she reported the error transaction to appropriate authorities.
She wrote: “Today my personal life has become a social media scandal. I have been named and shamed in public.
“Today, I am a bad person, a person who stole the money of students.
“With that being said, and being named a thief, but as we all know in every story there is truth and there are lies with the very same story”.
Miss Mani, according to authorities will be made to repay the money spent in full.
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