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EC attorney struck off the roll - six years after fraud conviction


It's the end of the road for a now former Eastern Cape attorney who exhausted all of her legal options after she was found guilty of fraud involving the Road Accident Fund in the High Court in Makhanda in 2017.

Julia Mfundisi has now also officially been removed from the roll of the Legal Practice Society of the Eastern Cape.

The High Court on Thursday struck her off the roll permanently meaning she may ever practice as an attorney.

Mfundisi's woes started in 2014 when employed as a litigation officer by the Road Accident Fund at its East London offices.

During July of that year, she attended an RAF Road Show in Zwelitsha where she met a claimant, Mncedi Dyosi.

Dyosi who lived in Bedford was involved in a motor vehicle accident in 2009 and as a result, he lost his right leg.

He approached the RAF directly in 2014 and became a self-claimant.

Dyosi attended the roadshow in Zwelitsha where he met Mfundisi.

Mfundisi then visited Dyosi at his home in August 2014.

According to the State, she falsely told him that the RAF would only help him with compensation for injuries - and not with a claim for future loss of income, something the court said she knew not to be true.

She then offered to help him to institute a claim for loss of future income and gave Dyosi documents to sign which he did not read.

He later realised later that he had unwittingly appointed B. Bangani Attorneys to represent him and had signed a contingency fee agreement of 25 per cent in favour of the attorneys.

Following her arrest by the Hawks in 2015, Mfundisi resigned from the RAF and was subsequently reported to the Cape Law Society.

She had been instructed to pay a fine of R100,000 or face three years of direct imprisonment.

Leave to appeal her conviction was refused by the trial court.

She then applied - unsuccessfully - to the High Court in Makhanda, the Appeal Court in Bloemfontein and even eventually the Constitutional Court for leave to appeal.