The South-African MMA and Boxing community has been up in arms over the past two days. It seems like charity boxer and SALE clothing representative Lisa van Loggerenberg has successfully duped a caring community into thinking that she has been suffering from terminal cancer for the past year.
“Something just didn’t seem right”, said Wessel Vosser, well known SA MMA personality. “Her recovery times after chemotherapy sessions just seemed too quick. This girl was claiming to have Stage 3 cancer and received chemo just days before training for a Boxing match again. Logically it didn’t add up. I decided to ask my friend, Santa-Marie Venter, who is a medical doctor, what she thought of these miraculous recoveries and cancer sufferer’s apparent excellent state of health.” Mr. Remy Archer, another well-known MMA personality and close friend, agreed. “This doesn’t sound plausible, it doesn’t matter from what angle you look at it.”
This was the beginning of an investigation which would end up leaving everybody involved shocked in disbelief. “It is very easy to fool the novice when no intricate medical knowledge about a disease like breast cancer exists”, said Dr. Venter. “This girl claimed to have Stage 1 breast cancer in June 2013. By 27 September 2013, she spread the news on Facebook that she had now progressed from Stage 1 to Stage 3 cancer. And on the 28th of October 2013 she said that she was in complete remission. There was no mention of ever having an early biopsy, or a mastectomy and block dissection (the standard protocol for breast cancer) and she still sported two very healthy looking breasts and a beautiful bush of thick hair by August 2014, when she claimed to have Stage 4 terminal breast cancer.”
“Since her ‘diagnosis’ in 2013, Lisa had to go for chemotherapy at Johannesburg general hospital. She always went at 19:00 on a Friday evening and none of us were ever allowed to go with her. We later contacted the hospital and found out that they only did chemotherapy during office hours from Monday to Thursday. We already knew back then that she was lying”, the Labuschagne family told us. Tiffany Labuschagne was Lisa’s best friend.
Johannesburg based Little Fighters Cancer Trust activist Carrina Niemand was involved in van Loggerenberg’s cancer journey from the outset. She was the one who nicknamed her “The Pink Gladiator”. “This girl always amazed me. She had two young children and was fighting this terrible battle with cancer. I wanted to give her all the emotional and financial support that I could.” Stephen Olivier, a father of two from Cape Town, was also a friend and supporter from the very beginning. “I’ve seen people close to me fight and lose the battle against cancer. This girl’s story made me get very involved on an emotional level. I wanted her to know that she is not alone in this and that I was always here for her. My kids absolutely adored her and supported her through her cancer journey too.”
What the alleged scammers didn’t realize, was that the Boxing and Mixed Martial Arts communities in South Africa are actually very small. Everybody knew almost everybody else. Dr. Venter (who is an amateur MMA fighter as well) happened to be closely connected to Niemand and Olivier.
Van Loggerenberg announced that she would have to go for an operation in Cape Town on 16 October 2014. She would be accompanied by her friend, Zach Midlane, who happens to own SALE clothing, a MMA brand that Van Loggerenberg gained major exposure for. They arrived in Cape Town and met up with the MMA community there for drinks in Camps Bay on the night before her surgery. Midlane admitted to dropping her off at the hospital after midnight for her surgery the next morning. She was to be treated at Vincent Pallotti Hospital by Dr. Elwyn Lloyd.
Dr. Venter was instantly suspicious. “You cannot admit a Stage 4 cancer patient 6 hours before surgery. The patient would have to be seen by a team of doctors, oncologists, physicians, cardiologists, anesthetists, cardio-thoracic and general surgeons and she would have to undergo pre-operative blood tests, lung functions and an ECG.” Sonia van Loggerenberg, mother of Lisa, claimed that Lisa would be undergoing “minimally invasive heart surgery to remove a tumour from her left artery which is blocking blood-flow”. She also said that this would be done with Lisa as an ‘out-patient’. “Firstly”, Dr. Venter said, “you do not perform minimally invasive surgery for Stage 4 cancer. In fact, you do not do ANY surgery on a Stage 4 cancer patient unless it’s palliatively aimed at reducing symptoms to make patients more comfortable. Terminal cancer patients are so immune suppressed and weak from the disease, chemo and radiotherapy, that they will probably not survive surgery. “It is impossible to perform surgery on anyone as an outpatient, you obviously need to be booked IN to a facility to receive any operative or intravenous treatment. We treat patient presenting with flu as outpatients, we don’t perform highly skilled cardiac surgery for tumour removals!”
Olivier attempted to visit van Loggerenberg at the hospital. Upon his arrival, he was told that there was no patient by that name admitted there. “Her mother, boyfriend Patrick Kearsley and Midlane all posted on Facebook that the surgery was a success and that she is now in ICU. But she wasn’t there. Neither the hospital nor the ICU was aware of her being admitted there as a patient and had no record of her. I was stumped.”
Niemand had been communicating with Midlane via Whatsapp for updates on Lisa’s progress. She also mentioned that the flowers she wanted to send never reached the person it was intended for. Midlane had initially told Niemand that he was going to stay with van Loggerenberg in a guest house while she was convalescing, but after the failed flower delivery, he claimed that they were staying at his aunt’s house in Glencairn. “I’ll go fetch the flowers at the guest house and make sure she gets them”, was Midlane’s answer.
“It is not possible to discharge a patient with terminal cancer from ICU to a ‘guest house’ on the day following surgery. Medico-legally, no patient may even be discharged from ICU to home. They need to be stepped down to High Care and then to a normal ward when the progress is satisfactory. Lisa would have a major risk of endless possible complications following such surgery- infection due to her immune status, thrombo-embolic events, haemodynamic instability- the list is endless.”
The “awesome foursome” as they have named themselves, slowly pieced the puzzle together. Dr. Venter, Vosser, Niemand and Olivier started comparing messages on Facebook and Whatsapp from Lisa, her mother Sonia, Midlane and Kearsley. “The one moment Lisa would be discharged to a guest house, the next moment they would be at Zach’s aunt’s house, and nobody was allowed to visit her. This was all very confusing”, said Olivier. He contacted Venter and asked her to enquire from Dr. Lloyd how the surgery went. Dr. Lloyd had never before heard of such a patient and confirmed that he has never treated her as an outpatient either. “What’s more”, said Dr. Venter, “is that Dr. Lloyd is a cardiologist. They are not qualified to perform heart surgery for tumour removals.”
Upon multiple enquiries directed at Lisa and her family, they failed to produce a valid reason for the hospital having no record of her admission. “She is booked as an outpatient! If anyone finds out that Lisa was actually treated at the hospital the doctors involved will lose their licenses and we will end up having to pay for the operation ourselves which can cost R300 000! Please stop contacting the hospital, rather contact me for updates.” After that message, everybody became suspicious.
Dr. Venter, being a colleague, sent an email to the Life Vincent Pallotti hospital manager, Mr. Adriaan Jordaan, and Dr. Lloyd explaining the entire fraudulent situation. They are not taking the matter lightly and immediately forwarded the information to their legal division.
A professional fighter, Mr. Sors Grobbelaar, has been horrified by the possible scam, as he was also a Good Samaritan in the cancer charities. He wanted to become involved in exposing the truth. He managed to provide flight details of Lisa and Zach’s return to Johannesburg (which were already booked in Cape Town upon their arrival). They will return on Friday 24 October at 00:10. “This was another strange thing… How can they book their return tickets not knowing how the surgery will go? And only a week after the surgery?” Midlane proceeded to contact Grobbelaar in a very worried state, claiming that he “shouldn’t have made their flight details public knowledge as this now puts their lives in danger.” Why? Sonia also decided to telephonically contact Grobbelaar and directed most of her explanations regarding the scenario at the ‘outpatient secrecy’ theory.
As a medical doctor who has genuine compassion for people, Dr. Venter decided to put the medical and given facts of the situation out to the public. “Fact or fiction- you decide.” The Facebook post has sparked havoc and there are currently close to 600 comments made. Lisa, Sonia, Midlane and Kearsley were asked repeatedly to respond to the allegations, but apart from a very watered-down ‘statement’ by Sonia, only denying fraud, there has been silence. “Technology allows us to see when people are on and offline on Facebook and on Whatsapp. All the parties involved in the allegations have furiously been following the posts on Facebook, but have not posted a single remark in their defense”, said Vosser and Archer.
If the community decides to institute a class action against the alleged fraudsters, they will be facing criminal and civil charges. That means jail time and major financial repercussions.
How does that saying go?
“Only two things in life are certain: death and taxes.”
By: Santa-Marie Venter
