Yet another high-life fraudster is on the loose – and going international. Having trawled the country’s professional classes for nearly a decade, Gavin Francois Stassen has turned to the British market, where, he claims, he’s already hauled in over 70 new investors.
The glittering lure for the unwary is a solid-dividend share in a cosmetic clinic venture, allegedly about to begin development in Mauritius, where, it’s claimed, a prime piece of land has been secured from the Mauritius Ministry of Land. Gavin Stassen’s Lifestyle Clinic Group is offering investors 700,000 of 1.2 million shares, at £20 per share for the first 200,000, and £25 per share thereafter.
The promotional brochure is highly convincing (unless you register lapses of grammar and spelling as warning signs). Quoting the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Stassen tells prospective investors that “6.6 million Americans had cosmetic plastic surgery done in 2002,” claiming that a recent poll has revealed that “31% of women and 20%” of men intend undergoing cosmetic surgery.
Investors are invited to participate in the development of a cosmetic clinic and boutique hotel complex (to accommodate the families of clients) to be situated in the tax-haven of Mauritius. The impression is given that “the group” is also moving on similar ventures in the Seychelles, Argentina and the Bahamas.
 It’s not clear how many investor/victims Stassen has actually netted – in a recent sales pitch he claimed to have the backing of at least 40 South African plastic surgeons for the venture, as well as hundreds of accountants, teachers and legal types. But Stassen’s claims aren’t exactly gold-coin – for a start, all but one of the men advertised as part of his “team” deny involvement. (And the odd-man-out is not a medic.)
Besides the dozens of disillusioned victims of an earlier version of the scheme, noseweek has so far identified 18 “investors” who have put anything between R60,000 and R2m each into the latest edition of Stassen’s marvel.
Stassen’s face-to-face pitch can be impressive – particularly if name-dropping tends to switch off your bullshit detector. He appears to have a good sense of what the general run of medical practitioners want to hear – particularly the kind with their heads buried in the latest medical procedure manuals, and no time to talk to bona fide financial advisors (there must be some, surely?). Neither Stassen himself nor any of his companies are registered as financial service providers, which they are legally required to do under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act of 2002.
Stassen readily refers to having the support of eminent medical practitioners, and flaunts his long history of successful involvement in hospital development. In a recent pitch to a source for this story, Stassen made much of having secured for his team “Dr Tommy Meyer, Dr Dale Howes and Dr Jan van der Berg, an ophthalmologist representing the Pretoria Eye Institute”. (He also cited the support and involvement of “doctors from the Netherlands and Germany”.)
This, it turned out, was something of a surprise to the team Stassen claims to have on board. Opthalmologist Dr Van der Berg, for example, who is listed in the fancy brochure as one of Lifestyle’s “Specialist Doctors”, strongly denied that he was on Stassen’s “team”. He refused to take
noseweek’s word for it that his name was being used in this connection.
Less than an hour after noseweek spoke to Dr Van der Berg, Gavin Stassen called to demand that noseweek “stop harassing my doctors”. Two days later, Dr Van der Berg’s name vanished from the website – and he was no longer available to discuss the venture with noseweek. Maybe Dr Van der Berg is embarrassed about his true involvement?
Another slick piece of marketing has been Stassen’s claim that he was the driving force behind a host of hospital developments: he claims that his Stassmed Hospital Consultants (registered in partnership with Dr Jackie Shevel in 1989) developed the original 25 clinics that later listed under the Netcare Group. Shortly before that listing, he boasts, he sold his interests to Dr Shevel – for a cool R400m. Dr Shevel, now resident in the US, would, no doubt, be amused.
Another doctor allegedly on Stassen’s team, Dr Dale Howes, appears to have swallowed the Netcare story, hook, line and sinker. Asked about his role in the Lifstyle Clinic Group, Dr Howes told noseweek he didn’t know what we were talking about. “I’m only an investor,” he declared, and professed ignorance of any website. Still on the line, he accessed the site and noseweek felt the good doctor go cold with shock. “What about the Netcare connection? Don’t tell me that’s a fake,” he blurted out.
Noseweek referred Dr Howes to Netcare CEO Dr Richard Friedland, who had already confirmed our findings: “The prospectus of Lifestyle Clinic Group records that Mr Stassen was involved in the development of more than 25 medical facilities and clinics over the past 22 years and that most of the hospitals developed by him through ‘Stassmed’ form part of the Netcare Hospital Group. This representation is not correct. The only link that could be tracked was the fact that Mr Stassen apparently played a minor role in the promotion of one or two of the clinics that were managed by Clinrun CC, a hospital management business owned by Dr Jackie Shevel. At some stage Mr Stassen was a minority shareholder in one or maybe two of these clinics, which were then acquired by Netcare on listing during 1996.
“With regard to Mr Stassen’s apparent claim that he sold his hospital interests for R400m [...] – this could not have been possible as the market capitalisation of Netcare upon listing was only R186m.”
Stassen remains adamant that he has secured land in Mauritius, where everything is in place for building to “soon begin”. Noseweek can confirm this much: Gavin Stassen is indeed known to the Mauritius Ministry of Public Infrastructure, Land Transport & Shipping – they know him as “Dr Stassen”.
The ministry’s permanent secretary, Mr Ram Prakash Nowbuth, categorically denies any deals with Stassen or any of his companies. Mr Nowbuth writes: “This is to confirm that my ministry has neither sold nor leased any property to the people, organisations mentioned nor to any other person or organisation for business or investment purposes.”
Among the first to fall victim to Stassen’s “cosmetic-clinic-on-an-island-paradise” investment fantasy were, it seems, teachers and parents at his kids’ school in Pretoria, around 2004. According to a statement filed with the Silverton police, in January 2005, Stassen allegedly offered a Centurion bookkeeper 1% of shares in The Health & Leisure Group Ltd (Mauritius) for R150,000, promising a 15% return by the end of the first year.
The bookkeeper writes: “He showed me photos of the FernCrest Clinic in Rustenburg and the Bay Hospital in Richards Bay. He also showed me photos of the Berjaya Hotel in Mauritius, which he was going to purchase and where the future clinic was to be located. The hotel was on the southern part of the Island, on the Le Morne Peninsula. I told him I would be interested in the 1% share.”
The man paid up – and introduced friends, relatives and clients to Stassen. By then, his statement says, the price of a 1% share had jumped to R200,000, since Stassen had in the interim, he claimed, obtained a hospital licence.
Among early investors listed in the statement to the police were: Andre Naude (R280,000); Johannes Walters (R250,000); Jaco Venter (R320,000); Hilde Basson (R200,000); Marius Auret (R200,000); Dr Cameron Condi (R150,000); and Dr Dale Howes (R300,000). Dr Howes later increased his investment to R450,000, and confirmed his involvement with the new version of the venture – and ended up “on the team”.
When noseweek asked Stassen what those initial investors had got for their cash, he replied: “I gave them the company [Health & Leisure Group]”. Hearing that noseweek has a recording of a meeting where he promised to refund those “investors”, he commented: “One of them later came to me to ask that I hand over the company to them for their money, which I did. I gave them the company with the intellectual property.”
Isn’t this the same “intellectual property” that forms the basis of the new Lifestyle Clinic Group venture?
And why would one of the victims re-negotiate on behalf of the rest, who had been promised a total refund? Some less than meaningful noises from Mr Stassen on this – and not much you’d call an answer.
Sadly for anyone who’s handed their cash to Stassen, not only does Lifestyle not own land in Mauritius, but it also appears that funds deposited into the Nedbank Stassmed account tend to disappear fairly rapidly, to be spent on various luxury toys and entertainment– top-of-the-range wheels, first class airline tickets, prime holiday accommodation (for Stassen and marketing director/girlfriend Lelanie von Weilligh), and so on.
For instance: On 18 December 2007, Piet Lindeque, listed in Stassen’s marketing materials as a “previous executive director of the Netcare Group”, made an online payment of R500,000, as part of his R1.5m subscription to the scheme, into Stassmed Pty Ltd’s Nedbank acccount. But a few hours later, Stassen obtained a bank cheque against this account, for R259,000, in favour of Fouché Motors, apparently in payment towards a Mercedes Benz C200 Kompressor.
Stassen: “Do you think someone like Piet Lindeque would be so stupid to just hand me R1.5m if this was a scam? The investors know that I have to live well and there is nothing wrong with paying myself from their investments.” (Some sources believe Lindeque has handed over at least R2m.)
Details concerning Stassen’s expensive lifestyle (like paying marketing manager Lelanie von Weilligh’s rent, and a R450,000 Landrover Discovery for wife Pauline), are revealed in court papers filed in the ongoing divorce case instituted against Stassen by Pauline – for having an affair with Lelanie von Weilligh.
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| Pauline & Gavin Stassen in happier times with unidentified icy object and friends |
Noseweek also spoke to Ronnie Tonkin, whom Stassen lists as “a former general manager of Absa Bank [...] responsible for structuring and planning the Virgin Money Credit Card deal for Southern Africa”. Stassen’s brochure says: “Ronnie has put together Health & Leisure Finance Group for Lifestyle Clinic Complex to aid and facilitate patients financially by offering surgical packages to South African market.”
Contacted by noseweek, Tonkin vehemently denied being part of Stassen’s team: “I am an investor like any other.” He went on to deny knowledge that his name appeared in Stassen’s promotional materials.
Yet two independent sources claim that on an occasion when Stassen spoke to a gathering of prospective investors, including pensioners and school teachers, among those he introduced as “members of the team” was Tonkin – yes; wearing an Absa Bank T-Shirt.
Might Ronnie Tonkin, like others who appear to have “kept faith” with Stassen, be lending just enough support to the scheme to keep the money coming in? Did these “investors” discover the fraud when they had already handed over their cash – and agree to play along in order to ensure some return on their outlay?
Other victims have cut and run, including Dr Cameron Condi, a successful Sandton dentist who paid R150,000 nearly four years ago for a share in the initial Health & Leisure Group Ltd.
Says a resigned Dr Condi: “There is nothing anyone can do. I opened a criminal case with the police three years ago and they did nothing. Commencing a civil proceeding would have been a waste of time as that man has nothing; he took my money and spent it. At least I’m left with my credibility.”
Stassen, who clearly has a tendency to “over-sell”, on one documented occasion seems to have lost his scheme a whole conference room-full of potential victims – and saved some doctors their hard-earned cash – by going way over the top. At a gathering of doctors convened a few years back at a Johannesburg hotel, by a Dr Walton, Stassen undermined his flashy presentation by showing images of a Boeing 737 that he claimed he’d just acquired, and which was being revamped for flying patients to Mauritius. “We are going to offer the patients treatment with class,” he reportedly told the would-be investors.
A doctor who attended the presentation told noseweek: “We may be witless when it comes to matters of business, but it didn’t make sense – why would anyone fly patients to Mauritius in a huge private jet?
The idea was to make more profit than we could in performing the procedures in South Africa – then we spend it on executive flights? It was bull. Dr Walton afterwards contacted us individually, to warn us. He said something wasn’t right and he felt responsible for having convened us. His warning saved at least some of us.”
Perhaps inevitably, there are those who hold on to the dream: Joburg cosmetic dentist Dr L Pepler refused to entertain the idea that he has been suckered (to the tune of R1.5m). He insisted to noseweek that the clinic remains a sound investment: “We had a very successful expo in the UK in October last year, organised by the Cape Town-based Oyster Portfolios and we would be getting more investors from there.” Dr Pepler says he has share certificates showing he owns 4% of “the outfit in Mauritius”.
Is Dr Pepler another of those who may have realised that the only way to salvage their “investments” is to wait it out for new suckers to bite, then collect what they can and run?
Or is he, like a whole lot of others, about to wake up?
Another along in a minute...
What makes a sucker a sucker? It clearly has nothing to do with intellect, or education. According to University of the Western Cape lecturer in clinical psychology Dr Mario Smith, it’s not necessarily an issue of greed. Dr Smith, who has done extensive research into behaviour patterns around fraud, says the gullibility of victims depends in large part on what he calls “the credibility of the plot” – i.e. is the story believable? But the story is believable if you trust the teller of the tale, and one way to gain trust is to associate ourself with other trustworthy people. Dr Smith explains: “Victims respond to who is associated with the schemer. As in [Stassen’s] case, the schemer would rely on the listing of eminent personalities or institutions within his project to gain the confidence of new victims.”
Pointing out that education does not guarantee common sense, Dr Smith also points to factors involved in obtaining an advanced education that may actually interfere with common sense. For example, says Dr Smith, “Doctors may believe they have beaten the odds to make it in medicine – so to some of us, risk-taking is part of life. We may keep taking such risks, in the belief that we will keep winning.”
What of the way that victims “keep faith” with a schemer, even when faced with clear evidence that something is amiss? Dr Smith agrees that it may be too painful or embarrasing to admit the truth: “It’s not even a matter of being in denial, it’s almost like teenage pregnancy: one would continuously hide the fact until the tummy gets too big to hide. Reputations are at stake.”
Out of shame, fraud victims often convince themselves that they are helping to salvage a sinking ship, says Dr Smith. Confronted with evidence that the ship has already sunk, they quickly revert to the scheme’s mastermind for an explanation: “At that point, any explanation from the schemer would be acceptable.”
Less educated than thou
Gavin Stassen likes to brag that he’s more successful than former schoolmates who went on to university to qualify as professionals. If success is measured by the calibre of one’s victims, Stassen has indeed enjoyed success.After matriculating in 1985, he joined the Department of Health Services and Welfare – where his responsibilities as a clerk apparently included applying the final “APPROVED” stamp to applications for private hospitals.
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| Gavin Stassen |
In 1989 his experience in the state health services won him an invitation from Dr Jackie Shevel to join him as co-partner in Stassmed Hospital Consultants cc, formed to advise developers on the specifications required for private hospitals. After Stassen and Shevel parted ways a few years later, he and wife Pauline moved to Cape Town – only to leave in a hurry some months later, to avoid, it’s claimed, unpaid rent bills.
From a townhouse in Centurion, Pretoria, Stassen began demonstrating a new entrepreneurial flare. In December 2003, he wrote, as Stassmed Hospital Consultants, and purportedly on behalf of (the unregistered) “Matrix Dental Laboratories (Pty) Ltd: BEE”, to the registrar of the SA Dental Technicians Council, Mr Lekitima: “It has come to our attention that, of the total number of registered laboratories, only seven are owned by black technicians. Furthermore, we are under the impression that there are only a handful of black technicians registered with your council.
“My consortium is prepared to make the necessary funds available to change the status quo that exists in the market, and to effect the necessary transformation of the industry.”
The proposal was not taken up, and Stassen began promoting the cosmetic clinic venture the folowing year.
It would appear that an extra-marital affair with his marketing director, Lelanie von Weilligh, led to Stassen’s downfall. It seems that wife Pauline, who was apparently well aware that the clinic venture was a scam, learned of the affair – and, angry that funds were being diverted to paying for, inter alia, Lelanie’s apartment, she began undermining husband Gavin’s credibility. Suddenly, investors – potential and current – began receiving anonymous communications warning them that their investments weren’t safe. They were also warned that Stassen did not, as claimed in his CV, hold a BLC (Law) degree from Pretoria University. | 
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