A Western Cape businessman’s attempt to claim insurance for the same vehicle damage twice has been dismissed by the Western Cape High Court – with WhatsApp ‘blue ticks’ among the evidence that unravelled his account.

The saga began on 19 January 2019, when a vehicle grazed a brick wall at a construction site in Maitland, Cape Town, causing bricks to fall onto a car belonging to Siyaba Electrical, a company of which Allan Geldenhuys was a director, reports News24.

This is according to Geldenhuys’ co-director, Petrus McGregor, who informed him of the incident and sent him 20 photos and a video via WhatsApp showing the damaged car next to the collapsed wall.

A day after the WhatsApp messages were sent, a claim for R48 930.79 was lodged with Santam, and Santam later paid out R45 930.79, covering the excess.

In Geldenhuys’ founding affidavit to the court, he said that while vaguely remembering the 2019 incident in which the insured vehicle had been damaged, he ‘did not ever see the damage to the vehicle personally’.

In July 2020, the unrepaired vehicle was returned to Geldenhuys at his office on the Boomsticks premises, a hunting supply store in Paarl.

He subsequently insured the vehicle – again with Santam – in the name of another company he directed, Somarigal Property Investments.

He claimed he was unaware that the damage was the same as that previously claimed in January 2019.

Geldenhuys consequently lodged a second claim with Santam in January 2021 for R48 930.00, less than one rand short of the first claim.

A Santam assessor, Anthony Molnar, interviewed Geldenhuys, who denied any prior damage claims.

Santam thereafter formally repudiated the claim after discovering that the damage was identical to that in the 2019 claim and notified Geldenhuys that benefits were forfeited due to fraud.

Santam opened a criminal case against Geldenhuys and reported him to the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS), which resulted in him being listed for fraud on the SAFPS database.

The listing had real-world consequences after FNB placed a restraint on Geldenhuys’s account in April 2024, effectively freezing it until the listing was resolved, according to News24.

Geldenhuys thereafter launched an urgent application in the Western Cape High Court against Santam and SAFPS, seeking an interim interdict to remove his name from the fraud database.

That application was dismissed.

After the SCA granted him leave to appeal to the Western Cape High Court’s Full Bench, Geldenhuys argued his case before Acting Judge Dawn Norton and Judges Mark Sher and Hayley Slingers in July this year.

The court, per Norton, with Sher and Slingers concurring, dismissed the appeal with costs, finding his account of events internally inconsistent, implausible, and fatally uncorroborated, and noting pointedly that ‘to say that this account stretches belief is an understatement’.

Full News24 report