Johannesburg, Jan 8 (PTI): A South African advocate who was once of Indian origin has been arrested for over scamming over 17 couples in India. She was located by a private security firms in the country.

She was arrested after the private firms located her, but her family and lawyer prompted her to repay the people she defrauded and they promised to do so. This will be the reason why she won't go to jail for committing fraud.

Reaction Unit South Africa posted a photo of a woman who was to be invited on Facebook, and it later turned out that she was Chris Gounden's lawyer, who asked to contact Gounden with an offer to repay all victims with the evidence of exchange. She was arrested on Tuesday on the grounds of being a scam artist. Prelyn Mohanlall on the other hand contacted Chris earlier on to share that Gounden would be willing to repat victims with proof.

Mohanlal was then seen asking wedding planners to pay her hefty amounts without even showing them a venue. This led to a lot of wedding ceremonies being ruined due to the venue being empty with no facilities.

Anonymous couples hired RUSA in December to help them look for Mohanlall. The firm discovered through social media that there were 17 couples who had been scammed in this fashion.

“Complainants were from several provinces in South Africa. A detective from SAPS Boksburg North (in Gauteng province) then placed a call to RUSA and told them that the same suspect who they were looking for was involved in two fraud cases that had been opened in Gauteng in 2024. She defrauded a car dealership to the tune of R200 000 and a man and woman to the of R26000,” explains Prem Balram, the Head of RUSA. The woman was tracked down by the RUSA according to the police, Mohanlall told the officers that she was a criminal lawyer who had been disbarred by the Law Society for embezzling money from a client’s trust account.

“The suspect has been established later was a convict on an account of fraud related cases and has a criminal history of pulling con for more than 20 years,” Balram said.

The Post, however, held that the woman insisted that she was not involved in any criminal activity and claimed that there was a “tough balance” in which her company had to repay from those people who had had to cancel the wedding.

His fiancé and him had to bear the ill-reputation of canceling their wedding in order to start saving for it again for the later months of the year, he shares the story of being scammed to do so. According to him, she has ‘stolen’ from them and so it greatly affected their planning ruining their memorable day. As a result now, all they are able to do is settle for the wedding according to the amount they can afford while reaching their hopes.

As she told the couple in the previous statement, she had to assure them ensuring a full in return but it wasn’t possible because all of her partners had pulled out in October. To some extent, all of her business had suffered greatly according to her There was a major reason why she had sent the letters, last year in late November she had to go through nine cancellations, which she had to inform all of the couples about. And for these reasons, she had to pull out once again going further out in time.

A total of R7000 had to be paid against ‘nine couples’ who were then infused into the business that they managed, till then she claimed to have said that it with a greater deal taking into account that she was a scammer.