A woman has been sentenced to jail after she defrauded a business of more than $2 million. Photo: NSW Courts.
An Illawarra woman who defrauded local businesses of almost $2.5 million has been sentenced to time behind bars.
Lynne Maree Geoghegan, who turns 60 this year, was a trusted employer of an accounting company when she first transferred money from the bank account of a client into accounts that she operated, on the pretext they were payments owed by the services company to suppliers.
The bank notified her employers of a suspicious transaction, however, after an initial review, they were satisfied by Geoghegan’s explanation that the transfer was above board.
For the next nine years on 108 different occasions, Geoghegan continued to transfer money from the client to bank accounts she operated. In total, she stole $2,461,371.51.
The bank continued to contact her employer and despite more lies and more false invoices, it became clear that money belonging to the client was being transferred by Geoghegan to her personal account.
She was sacked on 4 April 2024. An audit revealed the extent of her deception and the police were contacted.
Geoghegan was arrested the same month and charged with one count of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception, to which she pleaded guilty.
In sentencing Geoghegan, Judge Andrew Haesler said that the effect of her lies and deceit on the community must be considered.
“Geoghegan had a method; she was able to utilise the trust both her employer and the company for whom she was providing services had in her,” he said.
“It was only the actions of the bank that in fact alerted her employer and thus precipitated the discovery of her fraud.
“That fraud must have had … a significant impact on the [client’s] business and on the reputation of her employer.
“Prior to the commission of the offence, she was a person of good character, but the first fraudulent transaction meant that that good character … enabled her to maintain the trust of her employer and the company to which she provided services.
“She breached that trust.
“The sense of betrayal felt by the person she was providing services to and the individuals with whom she would have worked as a team has been deep and the hurt extends beyond the substantial loss of money.
“Matters such as this cause people to lose faith in others in our community.
“At the same time, we will not be a community if we couldn’t not trust others and we couldn’t run businesses without trust.”
The court heard from a psychologist that Geoghegan suffered from an eating disorder, depression, PTSD and persistent low self-esteem and that these issues, alongside plain greed, drove her offending.
She understood what she was doing and that it was wrong. She has expressed remorse in custody.
Judge Haesler said it was a difficult case to sentence appropriately.
“The facts reveal a systematic, deliberate fraud,” he said.
“There is no way that one can just simply calculate harm and then convert it to days, months, years in custody.”
After a 25 per cent discount for her early guilty plea, Geoghegan was sentenced to six and a half years in prison, with a non-parole period of four years.
She will be eligible for parole from 26 March 2029 and the total sentence will expire on 25 September 2031.
