News
PRETORIA - Yvette Engelbrecht & George Stancliffe Speed Reading Institute South Africa are under investigation on charges of theft, fraud, copyright infringement & fraudulent misrepresentation. The case is under investigation by the commercial branch of the South African Police Services.
"During her employment with the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics Institute (South Africa) in 2006, Yvette Engelbrecht allegedly made a duplicate office-key and then stole quantities of our training material and copies of our copyrighted course material. After setting up her own company, George Stancliffe Speed Reading Institute South Africa, Engelbrecht allegedly commenced copying our material and then allegedly proceeded to sell franchises to gullible victims for amounts believed to be R250,000 per franchise" according to Dr Bruce W Stewart, President of Speed Reading International, Inc & Chairman of Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics South Africa.
"Much of the material that Yvette Engelbrecht is fraudulently touting as her own work was unlawfully removed from our offices and we have had little difficulty in recognizing both the stolen material and the copyright infringements - firstly, I personally developed the material and am thus the copyright owner and secondly, in some instances, Yvette Engelbrecht did not even bother to remove my copyright annotation. And in the case of the stolen material, I personally customized many of the books specifically for usage in our training courses and these books are thus not available from any other source" says Stewart.
It is understood that Yvette Engelbrecht first attempted to sell a franchise to Elmarie van Niekerk, a contract trainer for CTU Training Solutions, in 2006. When Elmarie Van Niekerk learned that the franchise appeared to be no more than a fraudulent attempt to sell stolen property and plagiarized material, she cancelled the franchise agreement. It is understood that Yvette Engelbrecht is now suing Van Niekerk, not only for the franchise fee of $250,000 but also for loss of monthly royalties.
Other franchises, also believed to be little more than the fraudulent peddling of stolen property and plagiarized material, have been sold to Liezl de Klerk (Centurion & Midrand Franchise Ph 082 561 8532 and to Ilse Biggs (Johannesburg North & West Franchise Ph 083 226 2558) for amounts believed to be in excess of R250,000 per franchise.
"Yvette Engelbrecht is neither qualified nor competent to teach our courses" says Stewart. "She was a student of mine in 2001. She has received no instruction in our Instructor Training Methodology & Techniques and is simply not qualified to teach her franchise 'victims' anything about our courses. Her website claim to a 10-year training track-record is blatantly untrue."
Investigations are now underway to establish whether these franchisees knowingly received stolen material and also who benefited from the alleged fraud. Included on this list of suspected beneficiaries is the South African Revenue Services, says Stewart.
If anyone has been contacted by Yvette Engelbrecht or any of her franchisees regarding either a franchise or a contract for training, they are advised to proceed with caution and to contact either Dr Bruce Stewart in the USA at Info@ExecuRead.com or Priscille Farinha in South Africa at Info@PFTraining.org
Prepared & Issued by Dr Bruce W Stewart at Speed Reading International