Woman admits fraud of over N$1,2 million

A FORMER employee of an accounting services company in Windhoek admitted in the High Court this week that she committed fraud to the tune of over N$1,2 million in the space of a year while she was working at the firm.

Charged with 22 counts of fraud, Sylvia van Wyk (48) pleaded guilty to all the charges before Judge Collins Parker on Tuesday.
She admitted that between October 28 2002 and October 28 2003, while she was employed at the firm Windhoek Mechanised Accounting Services, she committed fraud on 22 occasions.
She did this by making out cheques in the name of a firm that was a supplier of food products to two of her employer’s clients, Nutrifoods and Independence Catering. In fact, though, the firm was not due to be paid by these clients for goods that had been supplied to them.
After the cheques had been signed by the responsible person at Nutrifoods and Independence Catering, the cheques were then marked ‘c/o S. Louw’ or ‘c/o S.J. Louw’ and paid into the bank account of a co-accused of Van Wyk, Seth Jacobus Louw.
An amount of more than N$1,22 million was deposited into the account in this way.
Louw then shared half of this money with her, Van Wyk told the court.
Van Wyk and Louw were set to go on trial together this week. With Van Wyk pleading guilty to the charges, though, their trials were separated. Louw now has to appear in the High Court again on Monday next week.
Van Wyk told Judge Parker that she had been employed at Windhoek Mechanised Accounting Services for seven years when Louw, who was a former supplier of Nutrifoods, contacted her and suggested to her that they should start with a scheme in which they would make Nutrifoods make payments on false invoices for the provision of goods.
If Louw had not approached her in the first place, she would not have done such a thing, Van Wyk claimed.
When Louw first contacted her she did not immediately agree to become part of his plan, Van Wyk said. He contacted her again ‘two to three times’ in the months that followed on that first call, and she then fell in with his plan, Van Wyk said.
‘I myself don’t know why I agreed to do it, but I did agree,’ she said.
The more than N$600 000 that she received as a result of the fraud was used merely for daily expenses, Van Wyk claimed.
Van Wyk, who is represented by defence lawyer Lucius Murorua, is scheduled to return to court on Friday next week for the hearing of further evidence before her sentencing. State advocate Ed Marondedze is prosecuting.
werner@namibian.com.na