Ex-bookkeeper gets nine years

An ex-bookkeeper was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday after she stole R1,2-million from her employers over a period of four years.

Theresa Denise Fuller, 54, appeared in the Commercial Crime Court before magistrate Logan Naidoo for sentencing after she was found guilty of more than 400 charges of theft in March.

The court found that she had stolen the money from General Insulation and Ceiling, a shipping company where she had worked for 26 years. Fuller stole the money from the company between 1998 to 2002. She was charged in 2003 and was released on R1 000 bail.

In her testimony Fuller claimed that she had stolen the money to pay off debts incurred by her boyfriend, who had run up huge bills with Nigerian druglords.

She said her boyfriend owed large sums of money to the Nigerians and if the debt had not been paid he would have been killed. It is believed that her boyfriend then committed suicide which made the drugloads pressure her for the money he owed them.

The court also found that Fuller had a gambling habit after it was established through investigations that she had spent large amounts of the stolen money gambling at casinos.