Former Bright Bees Early Learning Centre manager Claudia Gelonese, 26, jailed for fraud
A woman has been jailed after defrauding a Canberra childcare centre she worked at to help fund her lavish Sydney wedding. Details have also been revealed in court on how she was able to rort her bosses out of thousands of dollars.
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Former Canberra childcare centre manager Claudia Gelonese wept in court on Monday as she was jailed for rorting her bosses out of thousands of dollars to help fund her dream Sydney harbourside wedding.
Claudia Gelonese, 26, previously of Lyneham in the ACT, was on Monday sentenced to seven months in jail, to be suspended after four months served, for obtaining financial advantage by deception in 2018.
Gelonese, who once posed for a photo-op with former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, was the manager of Bright Bees Early Learning Centre in Nicholls in 2018.
She has since moved to Sydney after her wedding and after being sacked.
Court records show Gelonese’s offending began when she used a work credit card to bankroll a shopping spree on Etsy, and to pay a graphic designer for wedding invitations.
Gelonese, who is now nearly two months pregnant, went on to give her personal bank account details to parents at the centre, who in turn paid thousands of dollars in fees to her, rather than the centre.
The court heard Gelonese defrauded the centre to help pay for her lavish wedding, which photos on her social media account show featured a Rolls Royce wedding car.
In a victim impact statement, Gelonese’s victim, Amresh Kumar, said Gelonese’s offending came “at the time business was just getting on its feet”.
Under Gelonese’s watch, the centre was warned for breaching industry regulations, and Mr Kumar said her shoddy record keeping could have put children in danger, the court heard.
“She was so concerned by taking money … she wasn’t focusing on the job and was putting children at risk,” he said.
Defence layer Erin Priestly argued unsuccessfully for Gelonese to be handed a fully suspended jail sentence.
Prosecutor Bridget Atkinson said only actual jail time was an option, since Gelonese had not kept up with community work she was ordered to do as part of a previous small-time fraud.
Chief Magistrate Glenn Theakston said Gelonese had shown some remorse by pleading guilty but that it was “difficult in these circumstances to understand precisely what that (remorse) might be”.
“What I see before me is someone who cannot be trusted,” he said.
“It clearly involved a breach of trust of an employer on multiple occasions for reasons which cannot be justified.”
Gelonese will be released from jail in May and was ordered to repay $7772 she has yet to repay.
A tearful Gelonese told the court would struggle to repay the money she defrauded, saying: “I’m going to lose my job and then I’m going to be pregnant (when I get out of jail)”.