[imagesource:gencraftai]

White-collar crime in the country has been keeping the courts busy this month, with a few cases of females being jailed for making off with millions from their places of work.

On February 16, Dinah Botes was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by the Rustenburg Magistrate’s Court after she was found guilty of 126 counts of theft.

Trouble started piling up for Botes back in 2022 when she was working for a mining company, the North West spokesperson for the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, also known as the Hawks, Lieutenant Colonel Tinyiko Mathebula said via IOL.

“Reports indicate that between 2014 and 2019, when Botes was still an employee at Sitona Mining, she allegedly transferred over R9 million from the company’s coffers, into her personal bank accounts,” said Mathebula.

Following an investigation by the Hawks’ Rustenburg-based serious commercial crime investigation, a warrant of arrest was issued against the 42-year-old, and it was executed on June 13, 2022.

After going in and out of court, she was convicted and sentenced to 15 years for theft.

Image: Hawks

Around the same time, a 52-year-old financial officer of a primary school in Mpumalanga was remanded in custody when she appeared before the Delmas Magistrate’s Court.

Larrisa Aloma Vern was arrested by the Hawks for allegedly defrauding the school of an amount over R2.6 million. It is alleged that Vern was appointed by Delmas Primary School as a financial officer in December 2021.

Image: Hawks

She was responsible for making payments for services rendered, paying salaries to teachers appointed by the school governing body, receiving cash for sales made at the school, managing the school budget, ensuring expenses did not exceed budget, handling petty cash and making deposits at the bank. Little did they know, she was taking bits here and there for her own personal gains.

In another IOL report, a Cape Town-based Nedbank employee was just sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud after pocketing R5.3 million from the bank nine years ago.

Dolene Harrison, 49, was accused of playing Russian roulette with the funds, which were taken from a general ledger bank account at Nedbank. Harrison was an administrator in the operations centre and internal Nedbank suspense accounts for Investment Management in Nedbank.

Vukubi said between May 26, 2015, and November 2, 2015, the convicted fraudster illegally transferred funds from the general ledger account held at Nedbank to a suspense account held at the same bank.

“Thereafter she transferred funds from the suspense account to various accounts held at Standard Bank, ABSA, and FNB to the value of R5.3 million,” Vukubi said.

Now the Nedbank Investment Management employee has been sentenced to direct imprisonment in the Cape Town Regional Court.

Last but surely not least (at this rate, anyway), a former Transnet employee was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court in the Free State.

Joseph Leeuw was convicted on charges of damage to essential infrastructure and assault after he assaulted security guards when they found him with copper cables in his bag.

Tough times create tough people, it seems.

[source:iol&iol]