Glenda Ivy Burgess jailed over $12m eight-year fraud at Adelaide Brighton Cement – with no motive revealed

A trusted accounts manager has been jailed after she engaged in a bizarre $12m fraud at one of Adelaide’s largest companies – but received no apparent benefit.

An accounts manager and “trusted employee” at one of Adelaide’s biggest companies has been jailed for the deceiving her employer out of millions of dollars.

Glenda Ivy Burgess, 63, of Hillbank was found guilty, by a jury’s majority verdict, of nine counts of aggravated deception and nine aggravated counts of dishonest dealing with documents.

The 18 offences occurred between August 2009 and September 2017, while she was an account manager and “trusted employee” at Adelaide Brighton Cement.

In sentencing on Thursday, District Court Judge Adam Kimber labelled her offending “considered and calculated”.

Glenda Ivy Burgess outside court in August for an earlier hearing. She’s now in jail. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

“This was a protracted, systematic course of dishonesty engaged in over many years. It effectively caused your employer not to invoice a customer for about $12m and allowed that money not to be paid.

“You were in a position of trust. This was deception and dishonesty on a substantial scale. It involves a very high level of moral blameworthiness.”

He said Burgess’ offending related to making false entries into the company’s ledger to favour a specific customer, Concrete Supply.

“That company received about $32 million worth of product but paid only about $20m,” he said.

She also created a “false, misleading” debtors report for senior executives at the company to “hide the true amount of money owed” by Concrete Supply.

He said Burgess had also dishonestly increased the credit amount of Concrete Supply without approval and deliberately transferred debt away from Concrete Supply to another customer to benefit Concrete Supply. She also allocated payments received from other customers to the Concrete Supply account.

Glenda Ivy Burgess outside court at an earlier hearing with her husband Mark. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dean Martin

By July 2013, Burgess had stopped sending invoices to Concrete Supply altogether. Instead, Judge Kimber said Concrete Supply created its own invoices and paid about 70 per cent of what it really owed.

“You made entries which were designed to hide the debt … to hide the true state of the debt of Concrete Supply,” he said.

Judge Kimber said no motive for her offending was known but he was satisfied she benefited in some way but he could “neither identify nor quantify” how.

“Neither that investigation, nor a subsequent investigation by the police, has uncovered the motive for your offending beyond that you were motivated to benefit Concrete Supply,” Judge Kimber said.

“That the benefit to you is unclear does not diminish the calculated and protracted nature of your dishonestly while in a position of trust.”

He said the lack of identifiable motive “does not change that your employer was deprived of significant sums and that you were taking steps designed to limit the opportunity for your employer to discover that and to recover those sums”.

Judge Kimber said the offending had caused “substantial damage” to the reputation of Adelaide Brighton Ltd, who lost several long-term customers following her offending.

He said because she had not accepted or admitted her conduct, Burgess’ was “without contrition or remorse”. The court has previously heard she had stolen from a former employer more than 30 years ago.

He jailed Burgess, who was taken into custody at a previous hearing, for seven years with a non-parole period of four years and three months.