Double jackpot wins during a casino visit marked the start of a ruinous gambling addiction for a married couple who have admitted guilt on fraud, theft and money laundering charges involving close to N$10 million.
This is according to testimony heard by judge Eileen Rakow in the Windhoek High Court on Thursday.
Testifying in mitigation of sentence, Barnard Jantjies (61) told the court he decided to visit a casino in Windhoek one Tuesday, after having a dream about a gambling machine hitting a jackpot.
Jantjies said he did not know how to operate a gambling machine, but with assistance from a casino employee he used N$100 to gamble on a machine that looked like the one he had seen in his dream.
Soon, lady luck favoured him – or cursed him, as it would turn out – and he hit a jackpot, winning N$21 000, Jantjies recounted.
The casino assistant then suggested he should also try his luck on another machine, Jantjies said.
Ten to 15 minutes after he had started to gamble with N$200 on that machine, he hit a jackpot again, winning N$42 000 that time around, he said.
“That is where my gambling started,” Jantjies said.
He recounted that gambling became an addiction, with him gambling four or five days in a week.
“The urge to gamble was uncontrollable at times,” he said, adding there were also times when he went down on his knees and prayed for help to get rid of his addiction.
Jantjies said he became aware during 2014 or 2015 that his wife, Amanda Jantjies (58), was stealing money from her then employer, the bus service Ekonolux.
After pleading guilty to 876 charges of theft and 871 counts of money laundering last Monday, Barnard informed the court in a plea statement that he used the money stolen from Ekonolux to pay his personal, family and household expenses, and also to gamble “from time to time”.
Amanda pleaded guilty to 873 counts of fraud and 871 counts of money laundering, involving a total amount of N$9.98 million.
Barnard, in his capacity as representative of the close corporation Bareli Building Services, of which he is the sole member, also pleaded guilty to 127 counts of theft and 125 charges of money laundering, involving a total amount of N$3.45 million that was stolen from Ekonolux.
The offences were committed over a five-year period from January 2014 to November 2018.
Amanda admitted that the crimes were committed when she made various payments from a bank account of Ekonolux to her own bank account, to which her husband had access, and to an account of Barnard’s close corporation, under the pretext that the payments were made to suppliers and clients of Ekonolux for goods purchased by the bus service or for services rendered to it.
In a plea statement given to the court, Amanda admitted that she misappropriated N$9.98 million from Ekonolux.
She also said she, her husband and their family “lived a lifestyle that was beyond our means and this triggered the uncontrolled theft and expenditure of the money”.
In testimony in mitigation of sentence on Thursday, Amanda said she was experiencing a lot of financial pressure when she began to defraud Ekonolux.
She acknowledged that she also developed an addiction to gambling, after starting to gamble as a pastime following the dream her husband had about the gambling machine that paid out a jackpot.
By November 2018, she went to see the owner of Ekonolux and confessed to him that she had been misappropriating money from his business, she said.
Barnard and Amanda both told the court they will not be able to pay a fine if the court gives them an option to pay a fine.
Their presentence hearing is scheduled to continue on Wednesday.
