A 53-year-old accounts clerk has been handed a seven-year prison sentence by the Bellville commercial crime court after siphoning more than R13 million from a Stellenbosch law firm's trust account. Alwena Smith was convicted following a plea and sentence agreement with the state, facing 171 counts of fraud, 171 counts of data interference and four counts of money laundering, according to National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) regional communications manager Eric Ntabazalila.
Smith received a 12-year sentence on the fraud charges, with five years conditionally suspended, and a further 12 years on the money laundering counts, also suspended for five years. The court directed that all sentences run concurrently, resulting in an effective seven-year term behind bars.
Employed as a senior accounts clerk at the firm between 2006 and 2018, Smith was entrusted with overseeing the trust account's financial transactions. Clients would deposit funds into this account, from which the firm made payments as legal work progressed on their matters.
Investigators established that Smith exploited her own and a colleague's internet banking profiles to set up fictitious beneficiaries and execute 171 fraudulent transfers into her personal account. She deliberately misspelled beneficiary names to circumvent the banking system's duplicate detection. Between January 2016 and 2 April 2018, she misappropriated a total of R13 267 096, with 171 irregular cheques drawn from various client files.
In an effort to conceal her crimes, Smith returned approximately R6.5 million to the trust account. She also channelled some of the stolen funds through Garda TeK (Pty) Ltd, a company she registered as sole director. Additional amounts were deposited into accounts belonging to her husband and daughter, whom she told the money came from an inheritance. Both family members were subsequently cleared of any involvement after Smith confirmed they had no knowledge of her fraudulent activities.
