Fraudster Marinda Olivier (54) stole R11 900 660.35 from St Francis Care Centre while working as a bookkeeper for the organisation which takes care of the most vulnerable members of the community.
After a drawn-out legal battle that lasted almost three years, Olivier was recently found guilty and pleaded guilty to 956 counts of fraud she committed between 2002 and 2017, before she subsequently resigned in September 30, 2017.
In her plea of guilt, Olivier told the court how she had substituted the banking details of the centre’s creditors and suppliers with various of her own accounts and others belonging to her husband, and then managed to siphon the millions of rands during the multi-year fraud system.
SENTENCED
She was sentenced to 15 years for fraud (charge one) and 15 years for money laundering (charge two) at the Gauteng Specialised Commercial Crimes Court sitting at Palmridge Court.
Twelve years of charge two runs concurrently with charge one, thus becoming an effective sentence of 18 years behind bars.
OUT OF LUCK
According to the centre manager, Tilly Brouwer, the luck of the bookkeeper ran out after an official quarterly examination of the centre’s financial records, conducted a few weeks after Olivier had left, flagged the suspicious transactions.
This led to a thorough investigation which resulted in the subsequent arrest of the former bookkeeper.
“She was stealing us blind, she milked us. Unfortunately, an organisation like ours, maybe some big corporates as well, made the big mistakes of operating on trust. And especially us who are in the welfare field where we are very humanly-oriented, caring compassionate – we trust. There was total abuse of trust by Marinda.”
Brouwer stated she recalled the times when staff members were bemoaning their lack of financial support, not getting increases for years and having their salaries cut for months, but Olivier would tell the board there was no money, while she was regularly taking thousands of rands for herself monthly.
“This severely hampered our operations. There were times when the board was told there was not enough money to carry out certain services, we struggled to pay staff, had their salaries cut and other benefits stopped.
“Staff had to work under difficult circumstances because they needed more hands but there was never money to hire extra hands. Lots of sick people were dying because money to get extra staff to enhance services was being siphoned off on a monthly basis.
“It brought years of financially stress because that stolen money should have been our reserves or used to enhance our services and benefit our hard-working staff. “We believe we did our best, we delivered the service required but it was most taxing on our staff members who had to work long hours, and work very hard with insufficient resources.”
Brouwer added that with the benefit of hindsight, the centre is now doing things differently, as they have learnt from the mistake of operating on trust.
“If we had not operated on trust, we may have noticed when she did her financial reporting because at times her financial statements didn’t tally, but she had ways of convincing the board that everything was in order. She took advantage of trust and got away with cheating on her statements.”
APPEAL
The Advertiser understands that Olivier intends to appeal the sentence.
St Francis Care Centre is a registered NPO which caters to dozens of vulnerable children and adults, most of them suffering from threatening and/or life limiting conditions where they are cared for in a professional and comfortable environment while their physical, spiritual, emotional and social needs are catered for with care and dedication.
