Employee admits 407 fraud counts

AFTER committing fraud 349 times during her employment with one of Windhoek’s largest vehicle dealerships, Welinda Fortuin did not lose her stride as she started working for another car dealer in the city: there she just continued committing fraud – another 58 times.

In the Windhoek Regional Court on Friday, Fortuin pleaded guilty to 407 counts of fraud. She admitted that over the course of three years and almost four months, starting from March 2004, she defrauded vehicle dealers M+Z Commercial Vehicles and Auas Motors over and over, costing the two companies close to N$600 000 in total.After pleading guilty, Fortuin – a 38-year-old mother of two – told Magistrate Sarel Jacobs that she used the money simply for ‘daily uses’.That, she later explained, was for things like taxi fare to get her to work and back home every day, ‘bread money’ and for her children’s school expenses.Fortuin is scheduled to be sentenced by Magistrate Sarel Jacobs on June 22.Fortuin admitted that she defrauded Auas Motors to the tune of N$111 753 between December 8 2006 and June 19 2007. After the company discovered the fraud she had been committing, Fortuin’s pension benefits were used to compensate Auas Motors for the money it had lost.M+Z Commercial Vehicles was not so lucky. It lost N$482 965 due to the fraud that Fortuin admitted she was responsible for between March 1 2004 and October 13 2006.All of the 407 fraud charges were committed in the same way, with Fortuin misrepresenting to her employer that amounts of money had been used for general day-to-day expenses of the company while she in fact took the money and used it for her own benefit.The amounts she took during her employment with M+Z Commercial Vehicles varied between N$54,65 and N$5 000 at a time.At Auas Motors, the smallest single amount of money that she took was N$147,20, with the largest being N$9 600.After pleading guilty, Fortuin told the Magistrate that she was earning about N$5 000 a month at M+Z and about N$6 000 a month at Auas Motors at the time that she committed the fraud.Fortuin told the court that she did not pay back any money to M+Z after she was charged, because she was waiting for the case against her to be finalised first.She told the court she was sorry for what she did, adding that she realised that it was wrong. If given another chance, she would not repeat the mistakes she had made, she said.Fortuin had been employed with M+Z for about 16 years before she left the company to take up a job with Auas Motors, the court was told.She was employed as a cashier and administrative clerk at M+Z, the court heard.In arguments on the sentence that is to be handed to Fortuin, her lawyer, Chris Brandt, acknowledged that she admitted guilt on serious charges. He however argued that she showed that she had remorse over the crimes, and asked the court to either impose a suspended sentence or at least to suspend part of the sentence.Public Prosecutor Simba Nduna told the Magistrate that Fortuin had committed ‘a very sustained, systematic theft’ over a number of years. Her statement that she wanted the money for her daily use ‘flies in the face of reason’, with the amounts of money she was taking from her employers each month exceeding her monthly salary by far, he commented.Nduna asked the court to impose a sentence that would serve as an example to other people in similar positions of trust with their employers.Fortuin remains free on bail until her sentencing.werner@namibian.com.na