A HARDWHITE Trading (Pvt) Ltd employee has been slapped with an effective two-year jail term for defrauding his employer of more than $22 450. SILAS NKALA STAFF REPORTER
Tafadzwa Mutizwa (22) pleaded not guilty to fraud when he appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Crispen Mberewere, but was convicted and sentenced to five years.
However, 12 months of the sentence were suspended for five years on condition of good behaviour and a further two years were suspended on condition that he reimburses his employer $22 456,37.
The court heard that sometime in January 2011, Hardwhite Trading got into an agreement with Kingdom Bank under which the bank installed swiping machines allowing holders of cell cards accounts to purchase goods from Inns Express Outlet under Hardwhite Trading.
Part of the agreement was that the machines would only be used for purchasing and not any other purposes.
After installation of the machines, Mutizwa noticed that it was possible to make a deposit and a withdrawal using the machines and then hatched a plan to defraud Hardwhite Trading.
He opened a Kingdom Bank cell card account and on about 130 occasions while at work, he swiped his cell card and made deposit transactions of $22 456,37 well aware that he had not deposited any cash.
Upon sight of the electronic transactions made by Mutizwa, the bank acted by crediting his account with funds debited from Hardwhite Trading’s Kingdom Bank account.
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After the bank credited Mutizwa’s account, he went on to make withdrawals or payments.
The matter came to light on July 8 2011 when an Innscor internal auditor was making reconciliations and discovered that only $783,10 was left in Hardwhite Trading’s account.
Investigations led to Mutizwa’s arrest.
