Autism Central Coast charity defrauded: Marissa Esposito pleads guilty
A young bookkeeper who defrauded an autism charity stealing more than $330,000 spun her boss an outrageous lie that she stole one amount because she was being extorted by the “Asian mafia”. Meanwhile, clients of the charity face an uncertain future with one saying he could be homeless because of her actions.
Central Coast
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A young bookkeeper who defrauded an autism charity where she worked of more than $330,000 told spun her boss an outrageous lie that she stole one amount because she was being extorted by the “Asian mafia”.
In truth, Marissa Jade Esposito, of North Gosford, was secretly funnelling the money away to fuel her gambling addiction.
The 22-year-old faced Gosford Local Court this morning where she pleaded guilty to two counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception.
An agreed set of police facts tendered to court revealed she was employed by Autism Central Coast in April 2017 as an accounts and administration clerk.
At the time Autism Central Coast also ran Out of The Box Family Daycare and in her role Esposito processed payments for both organisations.
But instead of paying the money into the correct accounts, she fraudulently set up payments listed for legitimate payees such as “Hesta Superannuation” and funnelled the money into her private accounts.
Esposito went on maternity leave in August 2018 and a new bookkeeper was hired who discovered a massive discrepancy in the organisation’s accounts.
The MYOB software showed it should have $1.2 million in the bank when in fact the charity only had $220,000.
At the time the charity was in the process of becoming a benevolent society, which required a full audit, that led to the discovery Esposito had transferred $327,539.57 into her personal accounts over 79 separate transactions.
It also found she transferred $3415.76 to her accounts from the daycare arm of the organisation in four transactions.
On January 24 Esposito called Autism Central Coast CEO Rosa Trigg and told her “I have something to tell you and you’re going to hate me”.
“I went to visit my dad in prison and a few days after that, when I was living at Chris’ house, when I was on my own, everybody had left. Some Asians showed up at the door and demanded that I pay an amount of money or that my child would be killed. So Rosa, I took that money. I took that money,” the facts read.
“We haven’t even been close with each other and I lied to him about moving that I didn’t like his family but it was because the Asia mafia showed up at (her partner's) house and no one knows.”
On January 28 Esposito paid back $6000 and the next day her partner Mr Alipate attended the charity and offered to pay a further $10,000 which was later transferred into Autism Central Coast’s account.
He told Ms Trigg: “I’ll take the fall for it. I’ll tell police I did it”.
Later Esposito sent Ms Trigg a text, which prompted the charity to call police.
“The situation I told you about has been going on for much longer than I told you, that account belongs to me and I am so sorry Rosa I wanted to tell you everything but I was scared,” the text read.
Her guilty plea comes after the charity successfully lodged a civil application in the Supreme Court to freeze her assets.
However despite the order, police have not been able to identify where the funds had been spent, with Esposito telling detectives she had been gambling.
Meanwhile Autism Central Coast clients face an uncertain future.
One client, Kyle Farrell, told the Express Advocate he could end up homeless.
“In a result of this matter, the person has put me in a really difficult spot where Autism Central Coast can no longer subsidise my rent,” he said.
“By June I could be homeless because of it.”
Esposito was adjourned to be sentenced on May 2.
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