By A Correspondent- A Gweru based trio has been sentenced to three years in prison for defrauding a local land developing firm of six thousand United States dollars.

Gweru magistrate, Mr Edwin Machera sent Emmanuel Matondoro aged 41, Brighton Ndlovu (30) and Thabiso Mpofu (28) to prison for three years while suspending one year on condition they restitute River Valley Properties six thousand United States dollars before the 26th of this month.

The State led by prosecutor, Mr Bernard Nyoni proved 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 authority.

A report was made to the police and investigations revealed that Mr Vhengere had a forged copy of a Memorandum of Agreement of Sale and had fake receipts.

Further investigations revealed that Matondoro originated a manual card and purchase offer form on which he forged Mr Vhengere’s signature, purporting that he paid for the stand in monthly instalments of $75 and $100 while in actual fact he had made a once off payment of six thousand US dollars for the stand.

The court also heard that the trio have other pending cases of fraud after people approached the land developer following their arrest and discovered they had been duped using the same modus operandi.

-StateMedia