'Dr Matthew Lani': The risks of social media doctors

Social media has become a thorn in the side of the medical profession and public. Many health practitioners are confronted by impersonators and bogus medical products from people who pose as doctors.

The latest incident stems from TikTok influencer “Dr Matthew Lani”, who this week was charged for impersonating a medical doctor at Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg. 

The man claims to be 24 years old and to have completed his degree at Wits University three years ago.

His cover was blown on Monday when his qualifications were denied by Wits University and the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA), who confirmed he was not a registered doctor.

Lani, who had close to 300,000 TikTok followers, used social media to give medical advice and sold a belly-reducing pill called the Mokhaba Pill under health brand Immuno Bloom & Plug. Customers were paying R350 for the drugs. The supplement is, however, not registered under the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra).

The former chairperson of the South African Medical Association, Dr Angelique Coetzee, said she too has been a victim of impersonation. She told TimesLIVE Premium someone stole her identity on social media to sell health products.

According to the identity thieves, Coetzee is known for giving modern treatment for age-related hypertension “without pills” and is “absolutely sure” that anyone can carry out “a curative cleansing of the blood vessels at home and greatly improve their health and wellbeing”.

“They hacked my name and were advertising products on the internet and Facebook, stating I am a specialist,” said Coetzee.

“This is cybercrime and police seem to have difficulty in acting on it, even in my own case. I made a case again and asked Facebook to remove it.

“There can be no justification for anyone who falsely says they are a doctor and sells products.”

Lani often posted videos of the success his belly-fat pills and claimed, in a video, that he had been asked to send 500 bottles to a pharmacy in the UK.

However, a customer went on X (formerly Twitter) to share the description label on the bottle, which had spelling errors and what looked like a concocted bar code.

Coetzee said people like Lani put their followers at risk of consuming products which are unknown and not registered.

“This is a form of cybercrime in two instances. One is the misrepresentation of oneself and [the other is] selling products on social media and providing wrongful information that might harm people,” she said.

“Doctors should not open themselves up to these types of things. If someone hacked your name, the patient might still think they are talking to you and a person can be scammed to pay money into a bank account for medical advice.”

But who is "Dr Matthew Lani"?

He has posed as a highly intelligent academic, claiming to have skipped grades 4, 6 and 8 to matriculate at 16 and complete his medical degree by 21.

He also claimed to not have a matric but instead a higher diploma from Cambridge College. However, Cambridge College on Tuesday morning denied any affiliation with Lani.

He goes by the name of "Dr Matthew Lani", or "Dr Matthew Bongani Lani", but told his followers that this was only a social media name. He said his legal surname is Zingelwa, and on his LinkedIn profile he is named Matthew Sanele Zingelwa.

However, there is only one Dr Sanele Zingelwa registered to the HPCSA, a second-year medical intern at Thembisa Provincial Tertiary Hospital, who has since opened a case of identity fraud at the Thembisa police station.

The department of health has also opened a case of impersonating a doctor at the Brixton police station on Monday after it was found that Lani was a fraud.

TimesLIVE Premium tried to reach out to the TikToker without success.

Instead, an old Facebook profile was found where he went by the name Matthew Peterson and claimed in 2016 to have been a medical student at Wits. According to that account, he was born on October 10 1996, indicating he turned 27 on Tuesday and is not 24 as he has claimed. 

He had once ranted to his followers about the credibility of his qualifications, stating that his studies were paid for by his mother and not the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.

However, in a YouTube interview on Relebogile Mabotja’s channel last year, he said his mother was a domestic worker and his studies were paid for by his former boyfriend who had infected him with HIV.

TikTok on Tuesday moved to ban his account, but hours later Lani returned to the platform with a new account. Here he refuted claims that he was a fake doctor, labelling the HPCSA’s denial of his registration as “fake news”.

Lani started an online conversation where he was asked about his qualifications and insisted that he was a medical doctor, saying he was a general practitioner at a public hospital.

“Even if I show a degree, people will say it’s fake and that I got it online. At this point I no longer care what people say about me on social media,” he said.

“This thing started when I was going to release a tea, a herbal tea ... It seems as though the people behind this are fellow medical doctors. It’s as if I committed a crime when I was asked the mechanism of this tea and the tea is not out yet ... It doesn’t make sense to me to explain a product that is not even out yet.”

In June, the HPCSA said 124 bogus doctors had been arrested over the last three years.