Retired Durban Doctor Pleads Guilty To Fraud
Retired Durban doctor Eric van der Veen, 85, was convicted of two counts of fraud for signing death certificates which were then used in multimillion-rand insurance claims, without physically examining or seeing the bodies.
He was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, wholly suspended for five years.
While the doctor only received R1,000 for his services, the death certificates were subsequently used in what is alleged to be fake insurance claims — one for R6m and the other for R30m.
Van der Veen — who retired in early 2023 after working as a general practitioner first in Port Elizabeth and then, from 1985, in Durban — was arrested along with other suspects, including a director of a Funeral Service Parlour.