A Western Cape bookkeeper convicted of fraud must clean the Kuils River police station as part of his punishment.
|||Cape Town - A Western Cape bookkeeper convicted of fraud must clean the Kuils River police station as part of his punishment, the Bellville Specialised Commercial Crime Court ruled on Friday.
Wayne du Toit was also sentenced to three years' house arrest for devising a complex system involving the SA Revenue Service (Sars) to defraud his two employers.
In addition, he received a five-year prison sentence, which was suspended for five years on condition he repays the defrauded money within a stipulated period.
He was ordered to report to the prison authorities immediately after the proceedings to start his house arrest.
He had pleaded guilty to 53 counts of fraud and one of money-laundering, before magistrate Sabrina Sonnenberg, and was sentenced under a plea bargain agreement with prosecutor Tracey Bellelie.
Du Toit was in the employ of Craig Scott, trading as Cybertrack Radio Frequency, and his sister Tracey, who owned the business Cyberfibre.
His duties involved the calculation of payroll and taxation for both concerns.
He also had to load approved payments of VAT and other taxes into the e-filing system at Sars, on behalf of the two concerns, but only Craig Scott himself was authorised to release payments to Sars.
According to the plea-bargain document, Du Toit manipulated his employers’ system to make unauthorised payments from the bank accounts of both concerns into his own personal income tax account at Sars.
He did this to settle his own debt with Sars, but often made overpayments into his Sars account, which were then refunded to his private bank account.
His fraud caused Cybertrack a R124 523 loss, and Cyberfibre a R521 906 loss between August 2011 and March 2012.
Among the aggravating factors listed were that he abused a position of trust, and that the frauds were greed-driven. - Sapa