Sunbury mum Jessica Wilkes spared jail after stealing $100k from Coolaroo medical clinic
A Sunbury mother-of-three and finance manager at a local medical centre, who siphoned almost $100,000 out of the business over two years and blew it on personal expenses, has escaped jail.
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A mother-of-three who defrauded a northern suburbs medical clinic out of almost $100,000 over a two-year period while an employee has been spared jail.
Sunbury woman Jessica Wilkes, 38, was a finance manager with Coolaroo Clinic when she fraudulently siphoned $96,889.20 into her own bank accounts by disguising them as wages paid to past employees after their employment had finished.
Wilkes was sentenced in the Broadmeadows Magistrates’ Court on May 15 to a two-year community corrections order after pleading guilty to one rolled-up charge of dishonestly obtaining property by deception.
Magistrate Abigail Burchill also ordered Wilkes to undergo financial counselling as part of the CCO.
Her sentence was initially deferred at a court appearance in November last year to allow Wilkes to take steps towards rehabilitation.
Wilkes’ offending took place between March 2, 2015 and March 3, 2017 and involved 61 unauthorised transactions, with the largest individual deception being a $6746.36 transfer into her own bank account on May 23, 2016.
She even paid for her children’s daycare in Sunbury nine times directly from the medical centre’s accounts, a total amount of $8809.49.
Court documents released to the Leader reveal the medical clinic only became aware of the offending in 2018 when a former employee was audited by the Australian Taxation Office.
The former worker had only earned and declared $8561 in the 2016-17 financial year, but company records depicted $28,763 in earnings assigned to the employee.
Company records also showed wages had been assigned to the worker after their employment at the clinic had finished but had been paid into bank accounts belonging to Wilkes.
“This indicated Wilkes had amended and reproduced (the) PAYG Payment Summary after (it) had (been) issued,” the court documents said.
“Further analysis during that time period discovered a number of payments paid as wages to past employees after their employment had ceased.”
Wilkes was arrested after handing herself in at the Broadmeadows police station on August 2 last year where she told police she “took money that didn’t belong to me” and “paid myself when I shouldn’t have” during a recorded interview.
Wilkes initially denied taking almost $100,000 and believed the amount to be far less but after being shown her bank statements she said she didn’t keep track of the amount and didn’t realise it was that much money.
The court heard Wilkes had previously been given a community-based order in 2005 for another dishonesty matter when she was 22 years old.
Wilkes was employed by the medical clinic from May 5, 2014 to August 2, 2017 when she left after getting another job.
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