Telecoms fraud costing South Africa over R5 BILLION annually - report

The Money Show's Stephen Grootes interviews COMRiC CEO Thokozani Mvelase.

Telecommunications fraud is costing South Africa an estimated R5.3 billion annually, says the Communication Risk Information Centre (COMRiC).

The staggering figures are contained in the Centre's 2025 Telecommunications Sector Report which is the inaugural edition.

Telecoms crime touches everything from banking and energy to personal security and national infrastructure, COMRiC says.

"South Africa’s telco sector continues to face complex, layered threats, including SIM swap fraud, subscription and identity fraud, ransomware attacks, and infrastructure sabotage."

Telecommunications Sector Report 2025 - COMRiC

The illicit use of sim boxes, synthetic identity creation, and criminal bypassing of SIM authentication processes present evolving dangers as technology becomes more sophisticated, says COMRiC CEO Thokozani Mvelase.

"With subscription fraud we see a lot of syndicated groups that are actually able to take the services from our members using fake information, but also targeting vulnerable citizens who could be unemployed and looking for work who have a valid bank account and a valid ID."

Thokozani Mvelase, CEO - COMRiC

"These people are paid money to 'assist' in the processing of some of the applications that they do from our operators,"

Thokozani Mvelase, CEO - COMRiC

COMRiC also highlights calls for a National Cybersecurity Resilience Plan and sector-wide computer security incident response team (CSIRT)

For more detail, listen to the interview audio at the top of the article