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PHOTO: Olive Ngidi (middle) brags about her huge returns on the TVI website. The other women are identified only as Nomvula and Nombuso.
It sounds like a fairytale. One minute she was drowning in debt, the next she was living in a mansion near Schabir Shaik, being waited on by two servants, driving a fleet of luxury cars and revelling in the kind of bank balance a Lotto jackpot winner might boast.
But it looks as if Doris Nonhlanhla Hadebe’s glamorous life is about to come crashing down.
The South African Reserve Bank is investigating her rapidly acquired wealth and she’s already lost many of her gleaming new possessions.
Authorities suspect Doris (49) is a key figure in what could be one of the biggest pyramid schemes ever to hit South Africa.
And the Reserve Bank believes her riches were gained by exploiting gullible people with the same dreams she had.
The scheme that changed her life so profoundly is Travel Ventures International (TVI) Express, a multibillion-rand business that trades in several countries and has been banned in many.
According to reports South Africans have already invested R6 billion in the scheme.
Read more of Herman Scholtz’s article in YOU 2 August 2012.
