A top 'engineer' faked his degrees and only had a high-school education. He got away with it for years.

• A South African rail agency's chief engineer claimed to have a master's degree and a doctorate.
• In reality, he only had a high school education. He got away with the lie for years.
• On Tuesday, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay back some of his salary.

The chief engineer of South Africa's state-run passenger rail agency falsely claimed to have a master's degree and a doctorate in engineering, earning him a handsome salary of around $160,000 a year.

But, in reality, he hadn't been to university at all.

Daniel Mthimkhulu, 49, got away with the deception for years, but is now expected to spend a decade and a half behind bars.

On Tuesday, a court in Johannesburg sentenced Mthimkhulu to 15 years in prison. He had been charged with nine counts, including fraud and forgery.

Mthimkhulu was head of engineering at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa.

He was arrested in July 2015, having worked at the rail agency for 15 years, including five years heading up its engineering department.

He got the top engineering job by lying on his résumé, claiming to have a master's degree from Johannesburg's Witwatersrand University, as well as a doctorate from a German university.

However, the Johannesburg Specialised Commercial Crimes Court heard that Mthimkhulu only had a high school education.

During his tenure at the rail agency, he oversaw a deal worth over $100 million to purchase dozens of trains from Spain.

However, the trains were later discovered to be too tall for South Africa's rail network and couldn't be used.

Spanish authorities subsequently launched an investigation into possible corruption linked to the deal.

In 2019, Mthimkhulu admitted during an interview that he did not have a Ph.D. and had "failed to correct the perception" that he held a doctorate.

According to BBC News, the court in Johannesburg also heard about another of Mthimkhulu's deceptions — that he'd forged a job offer letter from a German company, and used it to urge the rail agency to increase his salary.

In addition to the prison sentence, Mthimkhulu was ordered to repay the company the equivalent of about $326,000.

In a statement, the head of South Africa's Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, Seswantsho Godfrey Lebeya, said: "This should serve as a lesson to would be fraudsters that crime doesn't pay."