Woman in $392k maintenance scam

The net has closed in on a woman with a knack of fleecing well-heeled foreigners of hundreds of thousands of dollars through fraudulent maintenance claims using children she bore during the subsistence of an earlier marriage with another man.

In one of the cases, Olga Mukwindidza Bhatti (33), who was once married to an Asian, swindled Akram Mahammed (60) of $200 000 through fraudulent means, which included blackmail.

The courts heard that the woman has two children from her first marriage to Rizwan Ahmad Bhatti. She would fraudulently change the children's birth certificates to reflect the details of the targeted foreigner. During her relations with the unsuspecting victims, Mukwindidza would photograph the men in the nude and threaten to leak the photos to their families, business, religious circles and press if they didnot pay her.

She also siphoned $20 000 from an elderly man of Caucasian extraction (name not supplied), which he paid as maintenance fees for the upkeep of one of Mukwindidza's child for nearly five years. It is the State's case that sometime in 2011, Mukwindidza had a relationship with Mahammed but they later broke up. She then lied to Mahammed that she was pregnant before misrepresenting that she had given birth to a baby boy. Mahammed denied responsibility.

Mukwindidza fraudulently acquired a fake birth certificate for her son Mason Kelly Bhatti in a bid to claim maintenance from Mahammed.

She changed her son's name to read Mohsin Akram Muhammed. Using the fake birth certificate, Mukwindidza applied for maintenance at the Harare Civil court where she claimed $2 000. It is the State's case that she manufactured school receipts purportedly from Little Explorer's School and claimed $1 050 as fees.

According to the State, the said child was not even enrolled at that school. Acting on the fraudulent documents, the magistrate granted her application. Mukwindidza, who had Mahammed's nude pictures, allegedly extorted $169 260 from him while threatening to take the pictures to his family and the press. In another case, prosecutor Ms Sharon Mashavira alleged that Mukwindidza fell in love with an 83-year-old complainant in 2004 before breaking up in 2010.

After breaking up, the court heard, Mukwindidza lied to the complainant that she was pregnant from him. On September 8 2010, Mukwindidza got a fake birth certificate in the name of Dean Leslie Mukwindidza. She purported that she obtained the birth certificate, number HMC 1221/2010 from Seke Registrar General's office. She then asked the complainant to pay maintenance fees for the child but he refused arguing that he had not seen the pregnancy.

Armed with the fake birth certificate, Mukwindidza made an application for maintenance at the Harare Civil Courts and the application was granted in her favour. The complainant was ordered to pay $400 per month as maintenance fees. In 2013, the complainant made an application for downward variation which was granted and he was ordered to pay $200 per month towards the upkeep of the child.

Sometime in October this year, the complainant conducted his own investigations and discovered that the child he was maintaining was not his. He made a report to the police. Investigations through the Registrar General's office revealed that the birth entry number used by Mukwindidza belonged to another person.