Woman stole 760k from employer and spent it on handbags

vicwatson

POBox19 wrote: »

What about the fat cat expensive AUDITORS. Their job is to comb the accounts each year and certify that the books are a true and accurate account of the state of the company finances????

And who signed off on the accounts?

vicwatson

BrianD3 wrote: »

One other thing I thought of was - 2009 to 2015 encompassed the Troika/austerity era, the spotlight should have been on finances and spending in all public bodies. Yet this happened.

From Donegal Education Centre's Mission Statement, to clarify where its funding comes from.

No accountability no risk all be grand shure

AndyBoBandy

She was sentenced to 3 years with the final 12 months suspended, however the judge said he had to consider suspending the entire 3 years...

He said the offence was well into the mid-range of such offences and merited a sentence of three years in prison.

However, because of the mitigating factors, he would suspend the last 12 months.

Judge Aylmer said he had to consider suspending the entire sentence but added that because of the seriousness of the offences, it was beyond the threshold of suspending the balance of the two-year sentence.

Someone steals €760k, and the judge still has to consider a suspended sentence.....

That's the maddest thing in the article!!

silverharp

what was she actually doing, literally just transferring money to herself or an invoice scam? the second one is plausible I guess but still a lot of basic controls missing

RandRuns

The fact that she could simply transfer this amount of money, over the course of years, into her account, without anyone missing it, makes one wonder how she is the only one up in court.
However, since education boards and the like tend to be stuffed with political appointees, the usual routine is that one nobody takes the fall, while the better-connected superiors (pillars of the community no doubt) shrug their shoulders and move onto milking the next scam.

BrianD3

silverharp wrote: »

what was she actually doing, literally just transferring money to herself or an invoice scam? the second one is plausible I guess but still a lot of basic controls missing

Not clear exactly what she was doing but it doesn't sound like she was some sort of clever white collar criminal/scam artist. However, according to this earlier article, when the Gardai searched her house they found "ten black refuse bags filled with documentation from her workplace"

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2019/1217/1101727-theft-trial/

LuasSimon

The rest of the staff where she worked were too busy on facebook and moaning about not been paid enough

thunderdog

Montage of Feck wrote: »

If your going to steal that amount at least spend it on something useful, rather than overpriced designer tat.

Some high end handbags increase in value over time. The fact that a lot of the handbags were in their original boxes/bags might suggest that she was planning on sitting on them for a while, selling them on for a higher value at a later stage

Crime pays.

One year in prison for all that money. In this sort of situation it's not worth paying it back either as the sentence is so paltry. Just have to make sure its hidden well enough ie on "bags".

This is what happens when you can only jail 150 odd women. They can get away with a lot.

Men arent much better. Saw a few cases over the last year or two where men were being paid well in advance of 50k per year in jail.
Sure why wouldn't you fleece some pensioner or clean some business out when you're going to be paid a premium to do the sentence.

Yet another story of the joke republic... always hard on crime in Ireland.

quokula

According to their website "The Centre is now one of the busiest in the national network catering for approximately 230 school communities and 3000 teachers", which means but the amount stolen is about 3 euro per teacher per month, it's not that crazy that it might have taken a while to be picked up.

Sardonicat

What was the intended purpose of the vast quantities of money stolen? Did no one notice when what it was supposed to pay for never happened? Did the organisation not have a remit to carry out certain tasks and given a budget for doing so and then have to provide evidence that they did it and produce evidence?

RandRuns

thunderdog wrote: »

Some high end handbags increase in value over time. The fact that a lot of the handbags were in their original boxes/bags might suggest that she was planning on sitting on them for a while, selling them on for a higher value at a later stage

You could be right, but reading about how simplistic her crime was, and the fact she appears to have made little or no effort to cover her tracks, I'm guessing that she didn't have any plan at all, and just bought stuff she liked. I know of a not dissimilar case a few years ago, where a company I did work with had a (male) employee who stole equipment that was useless to him over the course of years. When the Gardaí went to search his house, he had rooms full of the stuff he stole, piled up to the ceilings, with just laneways to get through it. He had never made any attempt to use or sell any of it, just hoarded it. He had a wife and young kids, and his wife was apparently relieved when he was caught, as she had been trying to persuade him to get help for years. I'm guessing it is some form of mental illness.
In the case of this woman and her handbags, I wonder if someone smarter might have been syphoning money off for themselves, and used her as the fall guy.

Sardonicat

quokula wrote: »

According to their website "The Centre is now one of the busiest in the national network catering for approximately 230 school communities and 3000 teachers", which means but the amount stolen is about 3 euro per teacher per month, it's not that crazy that it might have taken a while to be picked up.

I'd still like to know what they do. What tangible form does this 'support' take?

RandRuns

Sardonicat wrote: »

What was the intended purpose of the vast quantities of money stolen? Did no one notice when what it was supposed to pay for never happened? Did the organisation not have a remit to carry out certain tasks and given a budget for doing so and then have to provide evidence that they did it and produce evidence?

It is a government-funded quango. Stuff like carrying out tasks and budgets are secondary to the real reason these things exist - to provide well-paid employment for well-connected people who haven't the intellect or drive to hold down a real job.

Sardonicat

RandRuns wrote: »

It is a government-funded quango. Stuff like carrying out tasks and budgets are secondary to the real reason these things exist - to provide well-paid employment for well-connected people who haven't the intellect or drive to hold down a real job.

'Here's your annual funding, now go and do some teacher support stuff. No, I dont know what that means, either. Sure, whatever you think yourself. '

RandRuns

Sardonicat wrote: »

'Here's your annual funding, now go and do some teacher support stuff. No, I dont know what that means, either. Sure, whatever you think yourself. '

I'd imagine that's pretty much it!

Kivaro

POBox19 wrote: »

What about the fat cat expensive AUDITORS. Their job is to comb the accounts each year and certify that the books are a true and accurate account of the state of the company finances????

The Auditors should be fired.
But that will never happen, as that cozy cartel is another can of worms.
With the tax payer picking up the bill, as usual.

ThunbergsAreGo

What an absolute farce that is, how does noone know it is gone. The waste of money by NGOS must be astronomical. I read somewhere 33k per homeless person is spent by homeless charity.

2 years seems incredibly lenient

bossdrum

Kivaro wrote: »

The Auditors should be fired.
But that will never happen, as that cozy cartel is another can of worms.
With the tax payer picking up the bill, as usual.

The auditors are appointed on a yearly basis so they can't be fired. Companies should be forced to change auditors every 2 years to avoid the staff of each organisation becoming too pally with each other.
I used to audit a similar type organisation and every single euro was accounted for. The only extravagance I could see was cream buns being bought every morning.
It's inexplicable that such fraud could occur and not be detected in the first year. Ideally the auditors should be sued for incompetence but I think they cover themselves in the notes of the accounts by laying off responsibility to the Directors.

ednwireland

i always wondered what that place did, there seem to be loads of these places round, the previous directors should be hauled over the coals as well for not doing there duty of care.
whoever audited the accounts should be pulled up - but that won't happen because they normally have a disclaimer about information provided to them

AndyBoBandy

ednwireland wrote: »

the previous directors should be hauled over the coals as well for not doing there duty of care.

The Previous Directors are all off in the sunset enjoying their no doubt huge pensions... as well as the many many bonuses they'd have received over the years. Bonuses that were in no way related to any performance incentive or anything, just a 'here's a big bonus for getting this job in the 1st place' type of bonus.

Let's be honest, we all hate them, but we'd love to be one of them....

silverharp

chances are in an organisation like that they reclaimed the money she was taking from whoever funds them and probably making a margin for them too. It might explain why it went on so long?

POBox19

POBox19 wrote: »

What about the fat cat expensive AUDITORS. Their job is to comb the accounts each year and certify that the books are a true and accurate account of the state of the company finances????

No it isn't. The role of auditors are generally very limited.

It is the responsibility of the directors to maintain books that are true and fair.

If she had a vaguely sophisticated fraud with maybe dodgy invoices being approved by directors who didn't pay enough attention or if the directors didn't check what was actually being paid vs what was approved, or if say she did the payroll and just gave herself more it is hard for an auditor to pick that up.

Gruffalux

10 grand a month though. Every month. They must have been blind moles or literal fools not to notice.

RandRuns

Gruffalux wrote: »

10 grand a month though. Every month. They must have been blind moles or literal fools not to notice.

Or she was really only spending a couple of grand a month on handbags, and someone smarter was either pocketing the rest.

Wonder if they added up her spending to see if it matched the amount stolen, or would that be asking a bit much.

Be some raffle at the christmas party this year.

RandRuns

RandRuns wrote: »

Or she was really only spending a couple of grand a month on handbags, and someone smarter was either pocketing the rest.

Wonder if they added up her spending to see if it matched the amount stolen, or would that be asking a bit much.

As if she spent nearly a million on bags.

The money was laundered, even if it means stuff was bought and resold.

You'd want to be as gullible as the control mechanisms to believe she spent it all on those items.

Keyzer

POBox19 wrote: »

What about the fat cat expensive AUDITORS. Their job is to comb the accounts each year and certify that the books are a true and accurate account of the state of the company finances????

If she was good enough to rob the 760K, she was good enough to cover her tracks. Auditors are not forensic accountants, they can only audit what's in front of them and they take it in good faith the books are correct.

Sardonicat

Keyzer wrote: »

If she was good enough to rob the 760K, she was good enough to cover her tracks. Auditors are not forensic accountants, they can only audit what's in front of them and they take it in good faith the books are correct.

But there would have been nothing to show for it! €10,500 a month for no work/services provided or grossly inflated fees. What could possibly cost that much in teaching support?

BattleCorp

I don't know the full details of how the money was taken but here's an easy example of how to do it and not raise eyebrows with the Auditors.

Set up a dummy service supplier. Do fake invoices from them and make the payments for those fake invoices into an account you control. Hey presto, you've just nicked money from your employer and it's unlikely that an auditor would pick up on that. How would they know from looking at a balance sheet that the supplier is fake?

That said, if someone inside the organisation was paying attention, it would be much harder to get away with crap like that.