Fraud: Funeral parlour owner, woman held
2012-12-24 12:16
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Johannesburg - A funeral parlour owner and woman were
arrested near Umbilo, Durban, after the two used a corpse to fraudulently claim
life insurance, police said on Monday.
The woman, 35, apparently made up a birth certificate of a
fictional person named Aphiwe Ntombela, said KwaZulu-Natal police spokesman Col
Vincent Mdunge.
She then took out life insurance policies, collectively
worth R950 000, in this person's name with three different companies. She
subsequently paid a number of monthly premiums.
"When the policies were ready for claiming she had a
dilemma, because she had to kill a person who did not exist," said Mdunge.
"To solve this problem she approached a funeral parlour
owner from uMlazi and asked him to 'borrow' [lend] her a female body from his
mortuary, so that the body could be presented to the doctor for certification
of death."
Last Wednesday the funeral parlour owner, aged 42, took a
woman's body from his mortuary to eThekwini mortuary, where he presented it
under the name of Aphiwe Ntombela.
"The doctor saw the body and certified it as
deceased."
A death certificate was issued and the woman used it to
lodge fraudulent insurance claims.
The funeral parlour owner planned to come back on Friday to
fetch the woman's body, so she could be buried by her real family.
Police received a tip-off about the scam and waited at the
eThekwini mortuary to arrest him.
The woman who had secured the insurance policies was also
arrested.
The two will appear in the Durban Commercial Crime Court on
a charge of fraud on Monday.
- SAPA
