More illegal cigarettes found

A modern stationwagon stacked to the roof with illegal cigarettes was found on a farm outside Lephalale when Molalatau Security responded to a call to its crisis control number on Saturday evening. Earlier that afternoon a farmworker alerted the police that his co-workers saw two suspicious vehicles speeding along a gravel road on a farm about 30km out of Lephalale on the Stockpoort road.
Workers saw the vehicles pulling off the farm road into a thorny thicket and saw two men leaving the vehicles making their way back to the main road. At around 19h00 the worker phoned the Molalatau crisis number when he saw lights where the vehicles were parked. Andries Bester and Gerrie Botes responded where they found the two vehicles, cigarettes and four suspects.
The one vehicle, a Toyota Verso, contained more than a 1 000 cartons of contraband cigarettes with an estimated street value of R100 000.
The four suspects appeared in court on Tuesday. Charges were dropped against one of the accused, another pleaded guilty and was fined R10 000, of which he paid R5 000, with the other R5 000 suspended for four years on condition he does not commit the same offence again. The other two suspects are expected to appear in court soon pending further investigations.