Pretoria accountant gets six years for fraud

The Pretoria commercial crimes court has sentenced a local accountant to six years in prison for 25 counts of fraud.

The accountant had been convicted for stealing more than R250 000 from an international clinical research company in Lydiana through fraudulent transactions.

However the sentence of former Synexus financial manager, Aaron Tshwane Matsei was suspended for five years on condition that he pays back the money.

Silverton police station fraud detective Sergeant Letsosa Jackson Tepanyekga cracked the case which led to the conviction.

According to Tepanyekga, Matsei approved 25 payments to the company’s service providers for fake services such as analysis reports without their knowledge but deposited the money into his own FNB account.

Tepanyekga said Matsei worked for Synexus from 2018 and the first fraudulent transfer he made was of R19 950 on July 2019 and by December, he had stolen R266 495.

He said Matsei had forged the signatures of the service providers so the invoices seemed as legitimate Synexus bills.

“While Synexus thought that it was paying service providers they were actually paying Matsei because the money never got to the service providers.

“We were also able to get records of Matsei’s bank account, legally, and that is when we saw the money was received by him under the service providers’ names,” he said.

“The case was reported at the Silverton police station by the company in February 2020 and it was referred to the Hawks because of the amount of money stolen. However, the case was brought back to me to investigate,” Tepanyekga said.

He said Matsei pleaded guilty to 25 charges of fraud on September 16.

He added the investigation was over two years because he was hindered by limited resources.

“I wanted to ensure that I got all crucial evidence needed and that took me some time due to challenges of not always having enough resources at my disposal.”

Tepanyekga said the probe needed dedication, “sometimes I had to drive out of the province on weekends and sacrificed my personal time to get evidence from the directors of the companies involved”.

Tepanyekga has 11 years of experience as a police officer, and he described this conviction as one of many important cases he handled, “the stealing of money from companies is very daunting to businesses”.

In court papers Synexus argued that: “Synexus suffered financial loss when defrauded the total amount of R266 495.” The company was, however, not available for comment to Rekord.

Tepanyekga said he hoped the conviction would show communities that police are capable of ensuring justice is served.

“As station level police we are labelled as people who do not know what they are doing and this case proves differently. I would like for our communities to have confidence in us to say ‘police can do this even though there are bad apples but there are still those who can do their jobs’,” he said.

Tepanyekga said he is currently investigating a case in which a 34-year-old personal assistant allegedly stole R1.8-million from a food and medication company, Rosehip in Lesotho.

“I know that even in that case, we will get a conviction as I have been able to attain all the important evidence needed,” he said.

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