Greedy, thieving student begs court for leniency

MULENGA MUSONDA writes THE Zambia Centre for Accountancy Studies student who selfishly deprived a widow and her orphaned children their rightful terminal benefits of their late husband and father by hacking into the beneficiaries account and transferring over K350,000, knelt in the Choma Magistrates Court asking not to be sent to Prison. Bolick Mungaila, 33, knelt in the accused dock as he was mitigating before Chief Resident Magistrate Exnobert Zulu after he found him guilty in both counts and sentenced him to 42 months in jail with hard labour for his selfish and uncaring behaviour. Mungaila, a resident of Lusaka’s Kabwata Township, who went on to buy five vehicles after stealing the money, stood charged with two counts namely Accessing Data without Authority and Theft. In Count One it is alleged that Mungaila in Choma, unlawfully bypassed data through a Personal Identification Number (PIN) for Cornelius Chinkuli and accessed K353, 982.21n after overcoming Security measures designed to protect the Bank Account of the named person. In the second Count, he is alleged to have stolen K353,982.21n Cash the property of Cornelius Chinkuli through a Bank Xapit transfer. The alleged incidents happened between September 2017 and February 2018 in Choma. When the matter came up for judgement, Magistrate Zulu found the accused guilty and sentenced him to 3 years 6 months with hard labour for each count. In passing the sentence Magistrate Zulu found it inhumane that someone could exhibit such levels of greed to a point of leaving the widow and orphans struggling to eat or go to School. The Court further ordered that the Cars recovered be auctioned and proceeds be given to the Widow. He further ordered that the widow is at liberty to issue a distress of warranty to recover fully from the loss. The sentences will run concurrently and effective 5 May 2020. The Sun