Woman facing R 3million worth of fraud charges found hiding in a freezer
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A Specialised Commercial Crimes Court sitting in Tshwane has handed down a hefty sentence to a 37 years old woman who defrauded her employers of money amounting to more than R 3million between June 2015 and September 2017.
The court heard that Prishne Khan was employed as a bookkeeper at Northern Cricket Union from June 2015 to 18 January 2017, where she was given responsibilities that included processing payments for various service providers.
Instead of executing her duties honestly, she altered banking details on multiple invoices, replacing them with those of her husband and cousin and misappropriating R350,000 over six weeks from May to June 2016.
When asked about her actions, she decided to resign to avoid facing consequences.
Not long after leaving that employer, she was appointed as a finance manager at Customer Loyalty Consultant (PTY) Ltd from 09 March 2017 to 30 September 2017.
This role provided her with access to the company’s bank account and banking systems. Khan again, went to her old ways and manipulated customer banking details to funnel payments into accounts controlled by her husband and cousin.
Despite her ability to process payments, she could not execute them immediately due to a token needed, which was the responsibility of another employee. After leaving the company in September 2017, another employee provided her with the token, allowing her to release payments totaling more than R3 million to herself from September 2017 until March 2018.
The company became away of the said activities when the bank alerted them about a suspicious bank transactional activity which led to the police being alerted and she ended up making court appearances from May 31st, 2018.
After pleading guilty all 63 counts of fraud, she put all the blame to tough financial strains and being under pressure to buy a motor vehicle for her husband.
However, all that was proved to be false in court after it was discovered that she lost most of the money to gambling.
She sought leniency based on her responsibilities towards her three minor children aged 6, 12, and 15, and cited ill health as factors in her favour.
State prosecutor Adv Pulane Segalo said she should’ve thought of that when she decided to break trust her employers had on her.
The matter was postponed to 03 March 2023 for the judgment on the sentence; however, Khan absconded, leading to a warrant for her arrest.
Only a year later, on 30 August 2024, she was located hiding, in a freezer at her new home in Nigel, leading to her arrest and court appearance.
