Farm clerk gets eight years behind bars for R6.6m fraud

An  Eastern Cape farm clerk has been handed an eight-year prison sentence for defrauding her employer of R6.6m.

An-Nei Stumkie, 36, was sentenced in the Hankey regional court after being convicted on 71 counts of fraud on Thursday.

Stumkie misappropriated the funds from the Nuwelande farm — where she worked as an admin clerk — between June 2016 and January 2019, according to the Hawks.

Hawks spokesperson Capt Yolisa Mgolodela said Stumkie “substituted the company creditors’ bank account numbers with her own”.

“She would inflate claims and once the money was deposited into her account she would pay the creditors what was due to them and keep the difference for herself.”

Mgolodela said the clerk “also inflated the farm workers’ salaries and orchestrated the deposit of their salaries into her bank account where she would transfer what was due to the workers and remained with the difference”.

“The fraudulent conducts of Stumkie prejudiced the Nuwelande Farm cash to the value of R6,624,949,” said Mgolodela.

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