An identity theft victim has accused Absa bank of ruining his prospects of employment by blacklisting him for a crime he claimed he did not commit.

Musiwa Ndwambi, 38, had successfully applied for a job at Letsatsi Finance but a day before he was to sign a contract, he received a telephone call from the prospective employer telling him that he was blacklisted and would no longer be employed, Ndwambi said.

On enquiry Ndwambi discovered that he was listed by Absa at the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS) as a fraudster.

SAFPS is a company committed to fighting fraud in the financial services industry by providing a shared database with member organisations.

When Ndwambi approached Absa for clarity on why he was blacklisted, the bank insisted that he had tried to deceive them when he applied for car finance worth R474893 in June this year using forged documents, he said.

Absa also told him that he had a forged pay slip which was forged with the intention of manipulating the system so that he could qualify for the car he wanted to buy.

They did not show him the documents they claim he had falsified even though Ndwambi suspected that someone forged his identity.

"I could not convince Absa that it was not me who had tried to defraud them as the bank trusted their database instead," Ndwambi claimed.

Ndwambi said that since he had been applying for jobs by sending his identity document and driver's licence to prospective employers in the last three years, he suspected these documents were intercepted en route to prospective employers.

Ndwambi, who depends on his pensioned mother for survival, said he is bitter that the identity thief is depriving him of employment opportunities.

"I have been looking for a job for such a long time," he said.

"What makes this more hurtful is that Absa has refused to divulge the particulars of the dealer who accepted my application and details about the deal."

He questioned how the bank could have his pay slip when he had been unemployed for three years.

Faith Lokwe of Letsatsi Finance confirmed that Ndwambi had applied for a job as a driver at their institution and that they had discovered the blacklisting during their verification process.

Lokwe said they warned him to clear this because it would block his employment prospects.

Absa spokeswoman Zinhle Letlaka confirmed that an application for vehicle finance was received using Ndwambi's name and personal information in June this year. She said the application was rejected on the basis that fraudulent documentation had been submitted to the bank.

She said following Ndwambi's dispute of their findings, Absa had conducted a further review in September and found that the ID and driver's licence card presented to their branch that month matched those submitted in the June application.

"This invalidated the claim of identity theft," Letlaka said.

She said Absa cannot disclose the information of the car dealer who processed Ndwambi's application to Consumer Line but had now agreed to divulge this information to Ndwambi.

Letlaka said Absa only submitted the fraudulent application information to the SAFPS but had no influence on how they blacklist people.

Phumzile Kondile of SAFPS, however, denied that they had blacklisted Ndwambi.

She said their system allowed service providers to load adverse information about people they think were involved in fraudulent activities.

"Absa use SAFPS' database to load fraud or victims of impersonation. It is for this reason that I referred Ndwambi to Absa to rectify the problem," Kondile said. The office of the Credit Ombudsman has agreed to investigate Ndwambi's complaint.