VICTIM OF RECKLESS LENDING

In 2011 I Mr Itumeleng Benedict Khoe was granted an overdraft R30 000.00(thirty thousand rand) at Standard Bank for financial assistance to start a business(Rehab Trading Enterprise). The agreement was obviously that I would pay the bank on a monthly basis, until at some point I skipped payment due to financial and personal reasons beyond my control and as soon as I had money I again proceeded with payments into my account and was also prepared to pay the outstanding amount in arrears, but the bank informed me that my account had already been closed and handed over to the lawyers i.e Celeste Booysen and Stanley Brodkin Attorneys, contact details: 011- ********** , fax number: 011- ********** ; where they required me to pay a monthly installment into their account no: ********** 66, which I did and was further told by the lawyers to pay using two different reference numbers that is ********** 15******B11 or ********** 15******B11, in this matter the first nine digits ********** 15 are my bank account number. The two different reference numbers made me suspicious, but I trusted that Standard Bank would never mislead me. In June 2016, I started getting suspicious when I was told by the bank that my payments do not reflect and that they need proof of payments that I have been paying into the account. That is when I really became suspicious that I might be a victim of *****, especially as I have been paying into the lawyers account, but it has never been indicated to me by the bank or the lawyers that the progress or balance on my payments is of a certain amount. Furthermore, when I asked the bank to check the progress on my account, I was told that the account had been closed and therefore no information reflects regarding the last payment I made before the account was handed over to the lawyer.

The strange part is I have been paying a sum of money to their lawyers each month and as their representative, where in return the lawyers is supposed to allocate the money to the bank, but they do not seem to have knowledge of that. It is unfortunate that lawyers did not pay the money over to the bank, which would make sense why I had two use two reference numbers and not only one. I later requested the assistance of the Bank Manager,where I received a service request number: ********** 887, but with no positive outcome to date, from there I was sent from pillar to post until I was advised by my lawyer to contact the Ombudsman for Banking Services.