It was a finance manager’s query of why an account had gone into credit that led to the discovery of a near $30,000 theft by one of his employees.

Office administrator Ronel Viljoen had been in charge of reconciling the company accounts at Morrinsville transport firm Orion Haulage for five years.

But for around two-thirds of that time, Viljoen had been clocking up purchases from around 10 local companies that Orion had credit with, including Mitre 10, Repco, Ebbett Toyota, Napa, and NZ Safety.

Repairs and servicing of five different vehicles appeared to be her main spending stream, but she also bought tools, hardware, a lawn mower, camping accessories, clothing, shoes and household appliances, including a Soda Stream.

Finance manager Daniel Bougher noted she even clocked up grass seed that she put on the lawn of a new property she moved into.

After being caught, she took out a loan and paid the company back, but Viljoen is not alone in stealing from her employer.

Statistics show that for the 2023/24 year, Waikato had more people charged with theft by a person in a special relationship than anywhere else in the country. Nine of those 13 people were convicted.

In previous years, Canterbury had dominated the numbers in 2019/20 and 2020/21 with 30 and 20 people charged respectively. That was followed by 13 people in South Auckland for 2021/22, and 24 in Auckland the year after, but conviction rates varied between 40 per cent and 70 per cent.

Nationally, throughout the period, the number of people charged with the offence has slowly dropped from 142 in 2019/20 to just 86 most recently. The comparative conviction rates went from 92 to 57 in 2023/24.

However, while the charge carries a maximum seven-year prison sentence, the most common sentence handed down over the past five years was home detention, followed by community detention and community work.

‘Remorseful that she’s been caught’

Viljoen worked at Orion Haulage between April 2018 and April 2023.

One of her key responsibilities was reconciling supplier accounts payable each month.

However, from October 24, 2019, to March 27, 2023, she made 142 personal purchases totalling $33,055.11.

Her most expensive purchase was a $2266.96 vehicle repair bill to a Volkswagon Golf, while her smallest was $2.56, an Eveready torch brilliant beam from Napa.

Eighteen of the 142 illegitimate purchases were for vehicle repairs.

Viljoen managed to cover up most of her purchases by reusing old invoices to reconcile the accounts in the accounting software.

When spoken to, she said she had permission to use company funds for personal purchases and had been granted an internal benefit account instead of a pay rise by her previous manager.

That suggestion was refuted by the company, and questioned by Judge Tini Clark during her failed Section 106 discharge without conviction hearing last year.

Judge Clark questioned her counsel Matthew Wright whether she maintained that position, but he said she’d now come “to appreciate that she was not entitled to do what she did”.

Instead, Wright said, she had been “struggling in the role and was doing whatever it took to reconcile the accounts including using old invoices of similar values”.

The company was a family-oriented business owned by locals Glenn and Lisa McKay. At least 120 hours were spent investigating and collating police evidence, while senior managers spent at least 50 hours each too.

In her decision, Judge Clark said there was “an opinion expressed that perhaps the defendant is not actually remorseful… but rather is remorseful that she has been caught”.

The victims also had concerns about Viljoen being involved in the financial operations of any other company, and Judge Clark noted some “unusual features” in her S106 application, including that she hadn’t told her family about her offending.

“That is her personal choice if that is the case but it does have a knock-on effect to some extent on the information I have been provided with.”

Wright submitted that a conviction would threaten Viljoen’s employment prospects, thereby affecting loans she had taken out to pay reparation, and affect the “whole family’s future”.

Viljoen had since been working for Red Badge Security deploying security guards but did not handle funds. To get that job she was required to undergo a criminal history check and obtain a certificate of approval for a security licence, which is required to work in that industry.

Wright submitted that Viljoen and her husband had moved here from South Africa and she financially supported her mother by sending money each month. Viljoen also claimed her husband’s business was “not doing well”, but the judge noted she didn’t have any affidavit evidence to back that up.

Judge Clark ultimately dismissed her excuse of “struggling with her role and trying to reconcile the accounts” and effectively dismissed her S106 application as her offending was serious.

She found that the impact of a conviction on Viljoen’s family was “nothing new” and applied to all who appeared before the court, while she was unsure of the impact on her employer as they didn’t know about the court proceedings.

“There may well be a second look taken at the defendant before employers choose to employ her.

“Again, that will be a natural consequence of her offending behaviour because of the nature of it.

“She has shown herself to be dishonest. Employers generally tend to steer clear of dishonest behaviour.”

In sentencing, Judge Clark gave her full credit for her early guilty plea and a further 20 per cent discount as she had since paid the money back. However she couldn’t give any credit for remorse as “I have had no luck finding any expression of that sort”.

She sentenced Viljoen to 12 months’ supervision and 200 hours’ community work, taking into account this was a first offence.

‘I have financial skills exceeding expectations’

While her LinkedIn page remains undated, Viljoen listed Orion Haulage as a previous employer of five years and one month, and described herself as unemployed but an “enthusiastic, self-motivated, and highly organised individual”.

“I have over 21 years’ experience in various trades and industries – being appointed in mainly administrative and financial roles… I am a hard worker with a reputation for confidentiality and integrity.

“I have developed a wide range of skills being technical, administrative and financial that would meet and exceed the expectations for the role advertised.”

‘No reason to believe she was dishonest’

Orion finance manager Daniel Bougher told NZME it was a “real shock” to discover Viljoen had been stealing from the company.

“We have always operated a high-trust model. In this case, we had no reason to believe that Ronel was dishonest or a thief.

“It was a real shock to find that she had been stealing from the company regularly for a number of years and covering up this theft through fraudulent means.”

He also disputed her claim that she was “struggling with her role”, labelling it “ludicrous”.

“It would be exponentially more difficult to find old invoices of a similar value than it would be to just process the current invoice in front of you.”

As for Viljoen’s excuse being that she had permission for her spending from a previous manager, Bougher said the manager she was referring to didn’t start at the company until around six months after she had begun stealing.

The company had since changed its financing processes to include a two-person sign-off on each invoice.

Viljoen declined to comment when contacted by NZME.

‘Employee theft has financial, personal impact’

Billy Clemens, of Transporting NZ, said the road freight industry was primarily made up of small- to medium-sized businesses that were particularly vulnerable to employee theft.

“Seventy-five per cent of road freight companies operate five trucks or fewer, and margins and staffing are quite tight, particularly with this year’s falling freight volumes.

“Business owners are very busy, and often on the road themselves. This can lead to high-trust invoicing and purchase processes.”

Employee theft had a heavy financial and personal impact on businesses and on staff.

“Transporting New Zealand’s national team of member advisers see up-close what a nasty toll it can take, and can offer support to members before and afterwards.”

Clemens urged businesses to closely monitor their systems and set up invoicing and payment systems that require more than one sign-off which a dishonest staff member could exploit.

“Consider requiring authorisation for high-value transactions, consider snap in-house audits, and review purchases and expenditure.”

‘There’s a lot of shame’

Employers were finding it hard enough to keep their businesses alive this year without employees stealing from them too, Retail NZ’s Carolyn Young said.

“It has a big impact on business.

“Obviously it cuts into margin because you have shrinkage in terms of your stock but it also goes into that trust environment… it’s one of those things that makes people feel disappointed and uncomfortable.

“It’s not the sort of thing people like to talk about. Kiwis, we’re quite reserved in nature so it is one of those things that is quite hard from a culture perspective.”

Business owners also faced the dilemma of going through the prosecution process, or simply ushering the employee out the door.

“There’s a lot of shame.

“There’s absolutely a conundrum because the balance is working out what has been stolen and the impact that it’s had on the organisation, how you can prevent it happening again, and to prosecute or not to prosecute.

“We encourage all businesses to go to the police and lay a complaint.

“It’s a tricky balance to get and easy to say you should do this and do that but when you are dealing with people it’s more complex.”

Source: NZ Herald & RNZ