The Johannesburg magistrate’s court has found two men who claimed to be legal practitioners guilty of fraud.

“This is a case about a businessman, Kagiso Galesitoe, who was the owner of News Cafe Newtown, a R12m a year turnover business that is no more, allegedly due to the two accused Judge Sibanda and Zuko Madikane,” the court said.

The two men misrepresented themselves to Galesitoe and advocate Diederik Coetzee, posing as “advocate Sibanda"and “attorney Madikane”, and their action caused Galesitoe to lose his business.

Galesitoe paid them R88,000 over a few months in 2019.

The state said the men were not legal practitioners, not authorised to render legal services, not authorised to charge and receive fees for legal services and not entitled to compensation for their services.

Coetzee testified he was led to believe by Madikane that he was an attorney and as a result attended to an urgent application in the Johannesburg high court to represent Galesitoe in 2019.

The application was rolled over to the next day and completed by his colleague.

Sibanda and Madikane denied this.

In his plea statement, Sibanda said he had a legal consultancy known as Acuworx which helped Galesitoe, on the reference of Madikane, to see if an old matter Galesitoe was involved in and lost in the Supreme Court of Appeal could be revived.

Sibanda said when the case could not be revived that ended his relationship with Galesitoe and Acuworx was paid R10,000 for this service.

Madikane said Galesitoe was aware he did not have a law firm but an NPO — Lawyers for Black People — which had access to the best legal minds for free or at dramatically reduced cost.

Madikane alleged Galesitoe knew he was not an attorney.

The accused applied for a discharge, arguing there was no evidence against them. The court dismissed the application and they closed their cases.

In his judgment, magistrate Pieter du Plessis said the amounts paid to Sibanda and Madikane were not disputed.

He found it strange that the state would bring the various events covered by allegations of meetings and payments from August 13 to November 15 2019 into a single charge of fraud when there were two complainants in respect of the fraud charge.

The magistrate listed seven  instances during that period when payments were made to the accounts controlled by Madikane or Sibanda.

He found Madikane guilty of fraud in that he pretended to be an advocate, that he was authorised to render legal services and getting paid R10,000 while causing potential prejudice to Galesitoe.

Du Plessis also found Madikane guilty of fraud in that he pretended to be an attorney who could render legal services and charge fees wherein Galesitoe paid R78,000 to him and he benefited personally by R48,800, causing potential prejudice to Galesitoe,

The magistrate also found  Madikane made a misrepresentation to Coetzee that he was an attorney from Ndabeni Attorneys and authorised to brief the advocate.

The two are out on warning and sentencing will be in March.

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