A man from Lansdowne says he was swindled out of almost R400 000 by a builder for building renovations.
Zaakir Arendse, 30, claims Muneeb Osman, the owner of Kgnaso Holdings, conned him after he agreed to have a separate entrance built on his property in April 2022.
“I got his details online on Facebook; he came to my house and quoted me about R400k for the building renovations,” Zaakir explains.
He says that after he paid a R262 000 deposit, things seemed perfect.
“I did tell him it is quite a bit of money that I paid but he told me he has R1.3 million in his bank account.
“He even brought an inspector to the site and asked for a progress payment. I then paid R27k and then R75k; we also decided to extend the building to the house,” Zaakir adds.
But, he says dinge het verkeerd geloop when a local building inspector got involved.
“I submitted my plans but it was not approved, the inspector then stopped us. He complained about everything.
“I then got an engineer to come out and Muneeb wasn’t present.
“The engineer told me he is not surprised that the builder is not here, as he was not happy with the work.”
Zaakir says that after learning of the engineer’s request, Muneeb was unavailable until September, when he agreed to pay him back R250k.
“But he didn’t pay it back,” says Zaakir. “The walls were never touched by paint, I had to do the underpinning, replace the roof.”
Zaakir adds that he had to take out loans to fix the damage and is now suffering financially.
But, the alleged swindler, Muneeb claims Zaakir only paid him R238 000 and that the homeowner had stopped the project himself.
“He stopped the project because there was something wrong with the trusses of the roof,” Muneeb says.
“We were still on good terms, it went on for three weeks, a month.
“I was waiting for him to let me know when we could come back and start.
“I explained to him that a lot of money was spent on the project, all of the material that was needed for the structure work, that R238 000 would have covered everything.”
Meanwhile, several mense have come forward on social media claiming that Muneeb also scammed them.
He says that he is aware of the allegations and admitted that he caught on “sh!t” but had legit reasons.
“I f**ked up. With regard to jobs, I take full responsibility for the money that has been lost.
“It is my company. I take full responsibility and I will be reaching out to these people that lost the money.”
Muneeb adds: “I will be making arrangements with each and every one of them to pay back the money.”