Church treasurer gets 3 years for stealing R800k in offerings
The woman was a church treasurer who had been embezzling money for a period of four years.
A 43-year-old foreign national will serve less than five years behind bars for embezzling R800 000 from a church in the Pretoria CBD, the National Prosecuting Authority has confirmed.
NPA regional spokesperson Lumka Mahanjana said the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court sentenced Lady Memory Mutsika this week, for embezzling funds from her church.
Mahanjana said Mutsika was treasurer at the Pretoria City Seventh-Day Adventist church in the CBD where her responsibilities included depositing tithes and offerings into the account of the Northern Conference of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
“During a period of four years, from 2012 to 2015, Mutsika transferred more than R800 000 of this money into her bank account, for her personal use.”
Mahanjana said Mutsika pleaded guilty to the charges and asked for a non-custodial sentence of paying the church over five years.
The state suggested that Mutsika was not showing real remorse because though she had always indicated her willingness to pay back the money, she had not paid back a single cent since her conviction in March.
She said the magistrate agreed saying “Mutsika stopped stealing not because of her conscience, but because she was caught. The church placed her in a position of trust, but she betrayed that trust.”
Mutsika was sentenced to three years imprisonment for the 128 counts of theft she was convicted for.
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