A senior Nedbank employee who attempted to blame a ‘419 dating scam’ for duping her into defrauding the bank of R5.2 million, has been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by the Cape Town regional court.
The court made the decision on the basis of evidence that between May to November 2015, Darlene Harrison, 49, an administrator at Nedbank’s Operations Centre and Investments Management, fraudulently released funds from investment accounts to external third-party bank accounts of people or beneficiaries, who did not hold investment savings accounts with the bank.
They were real-time transactions and payable immediately.
Harrison’s exploits were discovered after a senior member requested to review two consecutive transactions she had processed, to the tune of R1.2 million each on November 2, 2015, a move which ultimately raised the suspicion of the bank’s fraud department.
An extensive internal Nedbank investigation, where several staff members who worked hand in hand with the administrator were interviewed, revealed that Harrison was the one who had committed the fraud by transferring investment monies into third-party external bank accounts.
State prosecutor, Advocate Andy Heyns told the court that during an interview with the bank’s internal investigators, Harrison made several admissions including that she had processed the fraudulent transactions and documents to support those transactions.
Her responsibilities with the bank included capturing, releasing, and processing investment funds on instructions of clients who held investment savings accounts with the bank.
The former employee’s attempts to challenge the admissibility of the alleged confessions made to the bank’s fraud investigators, in the form of a statement in her handwriting and recorded on video, failed after a trial-within-a-trial was held, ultimately allowing the State to further cement its case against her.
Heyns revealed that not only had she processed the transactions, but that in some cases she used her colleagues to approve the fraudulent documents, whilst knowing that they were forged.
Even though Harrison pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, the State revealed to the court that she had at one point admitted that the transactions were processed to the illegitimate accounts for the benefit of a person who, at the time, she believed to be her boyfriend, and from whom she would ultimately also benefit.
Throughout the trial, Harrison blamed her colleagues for the fraud.
She also claimed to have been a victim of a “419” dating scam wherein she was duped into transferring monies to the bank accounts to assist “the boyfriend” in his business venture.
She was convicted on 16 counts of fraud and sentenced to 15 years in direct imprisonment on Tuesday.
The Star