Johanna Petronella Last, known to her friends as Hannetjie Last, stood accused by the State of stealing just short of R900 000 between 2012 and 2016 from her employer, a local dentist, by cooking the business’s books.
Mrs Last had been employed as a personal assistant, and was partially responsible for capturing the business’s financial transactions in its ledgers and journals, and acted as the business’s ‘bookkeeper’.
Her employer alleges that he realized that one of his employees had been stealing from him after he received only four cash payments from Mrs Last over a 12 month period.
Mrs Last said “I don’t know,” when asked in court why she had stolen such an enormous amount of money from her employers.
On March 1, Mrs Last pleaded guilty to pilfering away a lesser amount of approximately R270 000 from her employers.
Magistrate J.J. Combrink accepted this lesser pleading and summarily handed down a sentence of five years effective direct imprisonment.
Mr Combrink explained that he had taken two aggravating circumstances into consideration in handing down his sentence; firstly, that this had not been the first time that Mrs Last had been found guilty of a similar criminal offence, and secondly that throughout the trial Mrs Last hadn’t shown any signs of comprehension for the seriousness of her crime.
Mrs Last has been remanded into the custody of Kroonstad Prison.
