Fraud doctor sentenced to 576 hours’ community service

A convicted Nelson Mandela Bay doctor must clock up a total of 576 hours at Livingstone Hospital as part of his sentence for attempting to defraud the Road Accident Fund (RAF) out of about R2.2m.

Dr Tony Moodley narrowly escaped a jail term when he was sentenced in the Gqeberha Commercial Crimes Court this week, but the 67-year-old will spend the next 36 months under house arrest at his Cotswold home.

Moodley, it was found, had received payment for submitting falsified claims to the RAF on behalf of 83 people involved in a head-on bus collision in the city in 2007.

The claims were lodged with a Bay law firm which then claimed on behalf of the passengers.

The RAF is a statutory body obliged to compensate any person for loss or damage suffered as a result of a motor vehicle accident due to driver negligence.

The claim must be accompanied by a medical report to establish liability.

However, the majority of the claimants from the bus collision did not even qualify for payouts, the court found.

It turned out later that the information in the medical reports had been false in that Moodley did not treat the claimants on June 17 2007 and only saw some of them more than a year later.

Then, following a motor vehicle accident on Christmas Day in 2007, Moodley assisted in yet another falsified claim by backdating the medical report.

Only a portion of the R2.2m was ever paid out by the RAF.

However, Moodley, who ran a general practice in Durban Street, Korsten, received a fee from the attorneys for each Statutory Medical Report (SMR) completed.

He was arrested in March 2015 and prosecuted by state advocate Wilhelm de Villiers.

On Tuesday, magistrate Hannes Claassen sentenced Moodley to 36 months’ correctional supervision coupled with house arrest and 576 hours’ community service at Livingstone Hospital, where he will be performing administrative duties.

A minimum of 16 hours must be served during the first month.

Moodley’s lawyer, Carolyn Ah Shene-Verdoorn, said she did not have instructions to bring an application for leave to appeal against the conviction or sentence.