A 24-year-old young woman is facing criminal charges after she reportedly stole $17 million from her employer, Eternity Investment between June 01, 2021, and September 3, 2022.
The News Room understands that the woman was employed as an admin assistant/cashier and was tasked with making cash payments to suppliers and inputting the necessary information into an accounting spreadsheet.
The company is based at Yarrowkabra, Soesdyke-Linden Highway and is involved in the trade of scrap metal.
The owner of the company, Stephen Bourne, told the News Room that the young woman reportedly confessed to stealing the money but claimed she only stole $6 million.
However, after a forensic audit was conducted, it was discovered that $17 million is unaccounted for during the period she worked with the company.
The audit found that the woman was falsifying the accounting spreadsheet by changing the font colour to white.
This means that the amount would only become visible once the colour is changed to a contrasting one.
“This girl worked with me as an admin assistant/cashier since around June 2021 and she would have been working the position and over time, I hired someone else to do the cashier work and that person would have discovered that some money was missing,” Bourne told the News Room on Friday.
It was only in September 2022 that Bourne discovered monies were missing when the new cashier came on the job.
The businessman explained that he told the admin assistant to look into the matter since she was at the time training the new cashier.
“She looked into it and she said no money was missing but she was actually editing the excel spreadsheet because she had access via a server to [new cashier’s] spreadsheet so, she was editing the spreadsheet,” Bourne related.
The young woman was later caught on security cameras taking money from the cashier’s drawer and placing it into the pockets of her pants. After Bourne confronted her, she reportedly confessed to stealing the cash.
That confession was recorded and the young woman was heard admitting to stealing money and saying “I was going to bring it back.”
A police report was made and the young woman was arrested and subsequently placed on $50,000 station bail.
Four months later, the police completed their probe and forwarded the file to the Director of Public Prosecutions for legal advice.
“$17 million was stolen over time, she was taking $300,000, $500,000, $200,000 over a period of time of a year and six months.”
“I am hoping that the justice system helps in effectively prosecuting her and I am trusting that she gets jail time for her actions, and I am also able to recover my money,” the businessman said.
What a sad state of affairs. I sympathize with the businessman as his kisses are massive. He is hoping to retrieve the missing amount but I doubt whether that is possible. I sympathize with the young lady In question because her good character is gone.