A student who mistakenly received about $1 million instead of her usual $100 monthly university food grant splashed out on a massive massive 73-day spending spree with her friends. Sibongile Mani, 27, who was claiming benefits to allow her to study, was said to have undergone a transformation overnight after the cash blunder. The accountancy student at the Walter Sisulu University in Eastern Cape, South Africa, gets R1,400 ($100) each month put into her bank account in food and book allowances.
But instead the company that administers the financial aid allowances at the university mistakenly sent R14-MILLION ($1 million) in cash to the student. Eyebrows were raised initially when her neat corn-row hairstyle was replaced with Peruvian weaves and she began wearing designer outfits and bought a brand new i-phone 7.
She began flashing the cash kitting out her closest friends with new outfits, drinking R700 -a-time bottles of whisky and jetting herself and her pals round the country to wild parties. Suspicions grew when a till receipt from a local SPAR shop was leaked showing that she he had R13.6-million ($900,000) in her account and her wild spending became more lavish and talked about.
She was finally outed by Samkelo Mqhayi, deputy branch secretary of the South African Students Congress (SASCO), who reported her to the National Students’ Financial Aids Scheme. He 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”.
By the time they found out after her two-and-a-half-month spending spree they discovered she had been blowing R11,000 a day which is a staggering amount in South Africa. The total missing from the account is R818,00 ($64,000). A fellow student 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!”.
In a Facebook post Miss Mani claimed she had reported the error to the authorities. She said:
”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”.
She said she was not denying anything but would tell her side later but she has fled the campus and gone into hiding and shut down her Facebook page.