The Great Telephone Hacking scandal rocking the Murdoch media empire jogged vivid memories for Noseweek’s Jack Lundin in his Fleet Street days.

The latest revelations of dirty tricks at the News of the World have brought it all flooding back: newsrooms clouded in cigarette smoke, pounding typewriters, thundering presses shaking the whole building ­– and Stuart Kuttner.

Kuttner was managing editor of the now mercifully-defunct News of the Screws for more than 20 years, until his abrupt removal in 2009 after a former private detective accepted cash payments from the paper’s royal editor for stories harvested by hacking into Prince Harry and Prince William’s voicemails.

Click to see the Ladbroke Montage.

It was love at first sight, but the handsome stranger had sticky fingers. Brenda Margach met Marney van Zyl at a Saturday evening dance club for lonely over-40s, and yes, when she set eyes on the tall, dark and handsome man she fell in love.

Marney van Zyl introduced himself as a retired advocate who was also a wealthy stockbroker and part-owner of the Colony Boutique Hotel in Sandown, Joburg. And although a mischievous twinkle in his eyes might in retrospect have signalled danger, Brenda was swept off her feet.

For the next five years they had a blissfull relationship as Marney won Brenda’s trust and she didn’t think twice when he suggested that she hand over R22,000 so he could buy Sasol shares for her.

How to profit from the poor and vulnerable.

Many moons ago, Jaco (Jakes) den Haan earned a living toiling away for Standard Bank as a director of wealth creation. So promising was he, one presumes, that in 1990 the bank paid for his MBA studies at UCT’s Graduate School of Business. But considering what he’s been involved in of late, ­– ripping off unsuspecting members of the public through a fraudulent scheme – it’s no surprise that the bank felt it best for him to move on.

The list of companies whose names have been used to market the scam is available here.

July 2009 Government Gazette

Liberty Life and Discovery compete for most hellish insurer to work for award.

It must be hell to work in insurance, but have you ever wondered which is worse: working for Liberty Life or for Discovery? Liberty Life! says Pawel Jurkiewicz, who was “employed” by Liberty Life as a “tied agent”.

Sensational allegations of dirty tricks routinely conducted by Specialised Services Group (SSG), the controversial Gauteng private investigators headed by Warren Goldblatt, have been made by the spooks’ former logistics manager, Debra Smart.

SSG’s favourite client, Investec, features again in the latest revelations.

Was luxury property construction group MKB driven into liquidation by Investec in order to protect the bank’s favourite – if massively-indebted – client Zunaid Moti? Yes, say Andrew Botha and Jonathan Killik, the youthful pair who founded MKB in 2002.

Cape Town businessman Russell Burnett had been put through the wringer by Deloitte when one of the partners messed up a valuation of a business Burnett bought in 2002, but instead of admitting the mistake and making right the financial loss incurred by Burnett, litigation took years.

Things have moved rather quickly since our last story was published. The members of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau called a special general meeting on 18 July to vote on a motion of no confidence in the committee, (the committee saved itself the embarrassment and  resigned en masse) which has been replaced by one that is regarded as more representative.

The good news: as a result of our last article, a white knight rode to the rescue of Judy Jurgens, in the form of a Johannesburg town-planning firm which did her property rezoning application free of charge.

Last August a case was lodged with the Equality Court in Durban on the grounds that the Ethekwini Municipality is racist in its debt-collecting practices by writing off all sorts of debt incurred by black people but that they are extremely diligent in chasing debt owed by their white/Indian residents.