A $14 Netflix subscription led to a Shepparton company discovering that one of its employees had stolen $20,000.
Michelle Twomey, 51, pleaded guilty in Shepparton Magistrates’ Court to a charge of obtaining property by deception.
The court heard Twomey transferred $20,537.04 from the accounts of her employer, T and M Plumbing, over a 13-month period.
Twomey was working in payroll and accounts at the Shepparton business when she made 71 unauthorised transactions between February 25, 2019, and March 1, 2020.
The deceptions were discovered when the owner noticed a $14 transaction for Netflix on March 23, 2020.
Four days later Twomey was fired from her job.
When the business owners went back through bank statements from the previous 13 months, they discovered the 71 separate unauthorised transactions made by Twomey.
Prosecutor Senior Constable Luke Lund said when Twomey was interviewed by police, she told them she had “a stupid belief it was the best thing to do at the time”.
Twomey’s solicitor said her client was experiencing personal problems at that time.
Twomey is currently serving a six-month County Court jail sentence, to be followed by a two-year community corrections order, for stealing $137,000 from another previous employer — a local building company — over 12 months in 2020 and 2021.
The defence solicitor argued that because this charge preceded the charges for which she was already in jail, the County Court sentence would probably not have been affected if this charge was heard at that time.
“The nature and circumstances were almost identical,” she said.
Magistrate Peter Mithen, however, disagreed, sentencing her to a further two months in jail.
“I’m not prepared to make it (the sentence) concurrent,” he said.
“These offences occurred over a significant period.”
He also ordered that Twomey pay $20,537.04 in restitution.