Rare cycad plants at centre of case as couple battle in court

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Pretoria - The war of the cycads was this week the subject of an urgent court application in which a judge remarked that if the allegations were true, the truth was indeed sometimes stranger than fiction. Rare cycads sparked the application before the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, and the bizarre tale of how a wealthy businessman’s “professional gambler” wife conned him read like a movie script. Judge Hans Fabricius removed the matter from the roll, as the wife had not yet responded to the allegations. The judge remarked that it was a pity he could not see this matter through, as he would have wanted to know how it unfolded. The parties are not named, as the wife, identified only as M, has laid charges of rape against her husband. The husband, identified as W, who lives on an estate in Midrand, is asking for the winding up of his wife’s prominent cycad business. He claimed the business owed him more than R2.4 million - money he said she conned out of him. He said the matter was urgent because she had already moved three rare cycads, worth half a million, from their home. He met M in 2011 on a dating site and they got married in July last year.

W has a rare cycad collection worth about R3m and when his wife got bored as a housewife, she asked to join the business. “I decided to involve her to keep her occupied,” he stated. She later said she wanted her own cycad business, and since then had allegedly been milking him for money.

M then wanted money to buy extremely rare cycads from another collector called Tony, whose collection was worth “hundreds of millions”. W said he lent his wife money to obtain permits for these cycads.

“This was the start of an elaborate, fraudulent scheme perpetrated against me.”

As Tony apparently did not have permits for his cycads, M asked her husband for a loan to secure these permits and he lent her R99 500. W wanted to meet Tony, but M always had excuses. Eventually she said they could meet at Monte Casino to sign the purchase agreement.

But this never happened as Tony “was involved in a car accident on his way there”. She said he was in intensive care and when W wanted to pay his respects to Tony in hospital, she said they could not go as she “could not stand the sound of life support equipment”.

W then wanted to meet with Tony’s legal representative, said by M to be one “Advocate Ben”. But M told him Advocate Ben had, meanwhile. committed suicide, and a new lawyer, “advocate Ferdi Preller”, had taken matters over.

While things seemed bizarre, W believed his wife as he Googled “Preller” and saw he existed. She also allowed W to meet “Preller” at Monte Casino. Happy that the man existed, W paid R300 000 over for the permits.

W asked M about Preller’s progress with obtaining the permits, but she said Preller had contracted prostate cancer and emigrated to England.

W became suspicious and again Googled Preller. This time, he discovered he was a retired judge and his picture was not that of the man he had met.

M’s demands grew, and this time, she said someone had taken out a hit on her life and she needed R150 000 upfront for bodyguards. W even met the “bodyguards”, who turned out to be bogus.

But W still stuck with his wife, and last month she phoned him to say she had been assaulted and raped by two men who injected her with a strange substance. He urged her to go to the police, but she refused.

Suspecting she was conning him, he locked his study at home containing the file pertaining to the cycad business. While away, M phoned him and said his office had been robbed. She said the robbers had hit one of their bull mastiffs at home with a panga and bypassed the other three.

W rushed home and found the dogs in good health. He saw two holes in the window of his study, matching pellets from a pellet gun they owned.

In another bizarre turn of events, he found eight Louis Vuitton designer bags, worth R80 000 each, designer shoes and jewellery in the boot of his Porsche Panamera, which M drove.

When he told M he believed she was scamming him, she obtained a family violence interdict against him and charged him with rape. He had to spend time in jail. Now fed-up, W wants all his money back.

M’s defence said she would deny all these allegations.

Pretoria News