Sole bookkeeper Teresa Tavoletti in family run business fronts County Court for stealing funds

A distraught Melbourne family has had to remove a special-needs child from a private school after their aunt stole $1.7m to fund her gambling addiction.

Teresa Tavoletti went to jail for defrauding a family business of about $1.7m to fund her gambling addiction

A family was forced to pull their special needs child out of private school after a trusted aunt and sole bookkeeper siphoned nearly $1.7m from their small business to fund her gambling addiction.

Teresa Tavoletti fronted the County Court on Wednesday over the rort that carried on for nearly seven years, and had she not been caught by chance, the court heard she would have continued

Judge Diana Manova sentenced Tavoletti, 62, to three years and six months in prison, with a minimum non parole of two years and six months.

In 2005, Simon and his wife Cara Tavoletti formed a small, family run concreting business OSL Concreting and Constructions in Carrum Downs that completed concrete slabs for suburban homes.

In 2011, after recommendations from family, the couple employed Teresa Tavoletti, who was Simon Tavoletti’s aunt, as bookkeeper for the company.

Tavoletti was contracted as the company’s internal bookkeeper and managed the company’s

payments and receipts. She worked for the company, in the home office, one day a

week.

After the sentencing, Cara Tavoletti said she has had to take out her daughter, who has special needs, from a private school because her family couldn’t afford to pay for her education due to Teresa Tavoletti’s fraud.

Teresa Tavoletti, she said, was like her mum who reassured her everything would be fine when the company’s financial position became a worry.

“She was so supportive and said ‘Don’t worry, it’s not your fault’, she would get the spreadsheet out and explain things and I’d believed her,’’ she said.

“She’d say whatever money comes in next week will be the profit and for me not to worry.

It was so calculated because when I worked out what she’d done, I kept cheque books and worked out the complexity of her deception.

“The deception was enormous. she’s changed the path of my life, she had the ability to control my life, I regret being able to love so hard. In a way I felt sorry for her.”

Cara Tavoletti, a mother of three, said Teresa Tavoletti would cook for her kids, baby sit them, and was a complete part of her family.

“We now want to put behind this awful chapter behind us,” she said.

Teresa Tavoletti was the only person employed or contracted by the company to manage

its books, payments and receipts. No-one else at the company worked on or reviewed the

company’s books and ledgers in MYOB.

Until 2018, the company regularly used cheques to pay its suppliers. Tavoletti

would prepare and draft the cheques and present them to Cara Tavoletti to sign.

Although Cara Tavoletti was required to authorise company payments, she trusted Teresa

Tavoletti and relied on what the latter told her regarding which payments to authorise.

Cara Tavoletti did not review the offender’s work or ask any questions about the entries

Teresa Tavoletti made in the company books.

The company also engaged an external accountant to prepare its annual financial

statements but the accountant was not responsible for bank reconciliations and did not review or audit bookkeeping entries Teresa Tavoletti made.

She siphoned nearly $1.7m between October 2013 and June 2023.

She deposited the cheques into her personal ANZ Bank accounts at various ANZ Bank branches on her way home from work.

A customer service specialist at the Frankston branch of the Bank of Queensland’s Frankston branch was alerted to a discrepancy on the signature of a cheque number and rang Cara Tavoletti to confirm whether she had written it. Teresa Tavoletti’s deception then began unravelling.

The family’s bank compensated them for about $1m and bankruptcy proceedings the couple initiated against Teresa Tavoletti raked in $256,350 from the sale of her house and a vehicle.

Detective Senior Constable Bernard Dowling from the Frankston crime investigation team said the sentence fitted the crime.