Home affairs employee convicted for faking people deaths to claim insurance
A 45-year-old Department of Home Affairs employee, Dawn Celeste Pieterson, has been found guilty of multiple fraud charges in the Calvinia Magistrate’s Court.
Pieterson was convicted on nine counts of fraud under the Criminal Procedure Act of 1977 and two counts of contravening the Birth and Death Registration Act of 1992. Her crimes, committed between February 2019 and September 2022, involved manipulating the national population register to falsely declare people dead.
The court heard that Pieterson, who had access to official systems, issued fraudulent death notices and used the falsified records to claim funeral policies from insurance companies, naming herself as the beneficiary.
Her actions left victims wrongly recorded as deceased, causing major disruptions to their daily lives.
Sentencing has been postponed to 26 January 2026.