The National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) in Maputo city announced on Tuesday the arrest of three individuals aged between 34 and 37 on charges of fraud and issuing bad checks.

"The crime was registered in the Nhlamankulu Municipal district and the complaint was made by the owner of a commercial establishment that sells used clothes in bales, reporting a fraud of around 531,000 meticais," said SERNIC spokesman Hilário Lole.

According to SERNIC, "the suspects contacted the owner claiming that they wanted to buy the goods and the payment would be made by check, and the merchant first told them to deposit the amount in his bank account," which also said that "the victim would have realized later, through the bank's alert, that one of the checks deposited had no funds and another was part of a passbook reported lost".

As soon as these facts emerged, the authorities set about clarifying what had happened through various pieces of information gathered at the scene.