Shame of teacher who faked cancer
A disgraced KZN teacher is facing charges after defrauding her school and pretending she was gravely ill
SHE was bald, had no eyebrows and had lost most of her eyelashes. Yet as frail and drained as she seemed she always put on a brave face and everyone who knew her regarded her as an inspiration. The children she taught at Cowan House Co-educational Preparatory School in Hilton near Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, sent her letters telling her how much they loved her, colleagues supported her and her friends and family hoped and prayed for the best.
The school granted her sick leave and all the time she seemed to be fighting the biggest battle of her life. But it was all a lie.
Vindra Jackaran Moodley (49) didn’t have cancer. She wasn’t fighting for her life. And she was never too sick to work or perform her duties.
Not only did she receive her full salary after she’d exhausted her sick leave, it also emerged she’d been defrauding the school she worked for – and she recently pleaded guilty to 73 counts of theft and one count of fraud in the commercial crimes court in Durban.
Cowan House not only paid more than R100 000 to meet Vindra’s salary and pay for a substitute teacher when she was “too ill” to work, it was also swindled out of more than R2 million after Vindra inflated invoices and siphoned off the extra money into her own account.
But to make matters worse, she had her son submit a statement taking the blame for the theft and fraud “on the basis of a drug addiction”, according to court papers. Subsequent investigations found the submissions were false and that her son had made the statement in an effort to save his mother.
Vindra initially agreed to speak to YOU but then tearfully retracted. She just wanted to get on with her life, she said, and was too traumatised to speak.
But two men who are willing to talk tell how they were completely taken in by the pretty, smiling teacher when they visited her for a photoshoot – and how betrayed they felt when she was exposed as a sham.
THE woman they got to know “portrayed every sign of being a cancer patient”, says Kireshen Chetty. “She was so believable.” Kireshen and his business partner, Sherwin Alwood, run a photographic studio, House of K&S, in Pietermaritzburg and were approached by Vindra in 2015 to do a shoot.
She’d got married a few months before and wanted to recreate some of the scenes.
Sherwin and Kireshen were fully booked on the day she wanted, they told her, but “we got talking and she told us about how she’d been suffering from cancer and she was so sad and down about it”, Kireshen says.
Sherwin, a cancer survivor himself, was moved by her story and he and Kireshen agreed to do a free shoot to “pick up her spirits”.
They went to her home in Hilton where she welcomed them warmly.
“She was such a lovely woman,” Sherwin says. “So inspirational.”
They never once questioned whether she was telling the truth, Kireshen says, as she “looked really frail”.
“We did her make-up and dressed her up and even had jewellery sponsored for
the shoot. We felt like this was our way of giving back and making her feel better.”
The shoot appeared on the studio’s Facebook page – and a few months later everything started going pear-shaped.
Vindra had been exposed and the public accused Sherwin and Kireshen of aiding and abetting her lies and of being in on the fabrication.
For a while their business was negatively affected, with people accusing them of promoting her when she’d never had cancer.
“We had to put up a statement saying we had no idea – we’d been duped too,” Sherwin says.
But most of the comments on their Facebook page were directed at Vindra. “Vinny, I’m in shock! You wrote me one night about losing your hair and I cried with you, giving all the support and encouragement I could and it was all a lie! For money!” one said.
“Even God might take time to forgive what you’ve done, Vinny. What a great con artist you are but karma has come around,” another said.
“This is so sad as she makes it bad for all those who’ve been affected by this disease,” yet another wrote. “What a horrendous trick played on people who really cared.”
Kireshen, whose mother has been fighting cancer for the past 21 years, still can’t get over the lengths Vindra went to.
“I did her make-up and the way she’d plucked out her eyelashes – she’d pulled them out in such a strategic manner, as if they were falling off in certain areas.
“It angers me. How can you stoop to that level and play on people’s emotions like that?”
VINDRA started working as an IT teacher at Cowan House in 2009. In her six years at the school she was responsible for teaching computer skills, managing, buying and maintaining computer hardware, as well as for software purchases and upgrades of administration and academic programs and licences.
She was also a member of a committee set up to plan a Proudly Primary conference to be hosted by the school in 2016.
Court papers show she negotiated with Big Beat Productions to supply sound and connectivity for the confer- ence – but in October 2015 Cowan House picked up on a discrepancy on the invoice.
The invoice had been inflated and the bank details altered from the usual Standard Bank account to an Absa account found to be linked to Vindra. And this was just the beginning.
Further investigations found there had been 73 fictitious or fraudulent invoices amounting to nearly R2,1 million that had been submitted to Cowan House for payment into bank accounts belonging to or connected to Vindra between 22 September 2013 and 29 October 2015.
Court papers state Cowan House received back R334 000 from some of the transactions Vindra was involved with, making the “actual loss suffered by the school R1 765 290,20”.
Meanwhile, another deception had been on the go. In April 2014 Vindra told the school she had cancer and “went so far as to produce letters from doctors and the Grey’s Hospital oncology department to confirm her diagnosis”.
She told the school she didn’t have long to live and shaved her head and eyebrows “to appear more convincing”, court papers say.
Vindra was granted sick leave and the school continued to pay her salary after she’d exhausted her sick leave. A substitute teacher was employed in her absence to the tune of R38 640 – which was in addition to Vindra’s salary of R67 074,66.
After the school unearthed her account fraud an investigation was instigated into her health claims too. It emerged Grey’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg didn’t know her and the letters from the hospital and her doctors were all forged.
Andrew Barnes, chairman of the board at Cowan House, says Vindra was suspended while the investigation was ongoing and has now been relieved of her position.
“While staff felt betrayed there’s a sense of closure now the court process is coming to an end,” Barnes says.
Elize Joubert, CEO of the Cancer Association of South Africa (Cansa), says fabricating cancer is wrong on many levels.
“Stories such as this certainly affect patients since the public might doubt the sincerity of their disease and it causes undue stress to the patients and their caregivers,” she says.
“It’s sad and unacceptable for someone to pretend to have cancer and use it for their personal benefit.”
Vindra is due back in court on 10 April for a pre-sentencing hearing.
‘What a horrendous trick played on people who really cared’