The Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court this week sentenced a former finance manager to ten years in prison for 63 counts of fraud, totalling some R3 million.
Prishne Khan worked for two companies between 2015 and 2017, during which time she altered invoices and used access to online systems to misappropriate large sums of money, which were then paid into accounts belonging to relatives.
One of the affected companies noted the fraudulent transactions, and she was arrested in early 2018. She claimed that she had only stolen the money to help her husband buy a car, although the evidence indicated she had blown millions of rands on gambling.
When the verdict was to be handed down, Khan had absconded. When she was eventually traced to a residence in Nigel, she was discovered hiding in a freezer.
Her sentence will likely be cold comfort for those she defrauded.