Grand Theft Auto… But Make It Social Grants by Veer Gosai
Grand Theft Auto: Social Grant Edition explores what happens when a welfare system built for 18 million people collides with modern fraud tactics, weak KYC pipelines, and facial-verification technology that isn’t designed for South Africa.
This talk begins with a personal story: as a 19-year-old student, I discovered someone had stolen my identity, opened a bank account in my name, and was collecting a SASSA SRD R370 grant. Looking deeper, an unauthenticated API, demographic irregularities, and KYC inconsistencies across major banks. The investigation made national headlines and ultimately led to me presenting the findings to Parliament.
But this session goes beyond the initial vulnerability. We’ll dig into the technical challenge of building secure identity verification for millions of people with varying access to devices, networks, and documentation. You’ll learn why facial biometrics aren’t a magic bullet, how false rejects/accepts happen in real-world South African conditions, and what it takes to make verification both secure and accessible at a national scale.
Expect a mix of storytelling, hopefully demos / historical tests, fraud-chain breakdowns, engineering insights, and practical lessons for anyone building identity or verification systems in the real world.
🗣️ About the speaker
Veer Gosai is a Stellenbosch University 2nd Year BSc Geoinformatics (Computer Science) student. He's been fortunate enough to work as a Cybersecurity Analyst Intern at both Capitec Bank and Purple Group (EasyEquities). In 2024, he made the massive discovery of fraud in the SASSA SRD Grant System alongside a friend. After many interviews, they eventually made their way to present their findings to the Parliament of South Africa.
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