ANZ manager stole $300,000 from workplace to fund lavish lifestyle
A MELBOURNE mum, along with her husband, earned a combined annual income of $500,000. Despite being highly paid, the ANZ manager stole more than $300,000 from the bank to fund her lavish lifestyle, a court has heard.
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A GREEDY, highly-paid ANZ manager stole more than $300,000 from the bank to fund a lavish lifestyle, a court has heard.
Tracey Cook — who, together with her husband, was pulling in a combined annual income of $500,000 — stole the money to buy a jetski, an investment property, pay credit card and tax bills.
WESTPAC AND ANZ REFUND CREDIT CARD HOLDERS
The investment property she paid in part for with the looted cash was across the road from her swank inner west home.
Cook sobbed as she pleaded guilty to obtaining property by deception for the brazen scam.
The 44-year-old mother of two tried to avoid jail for the theft, claiming a custodial sentence will adversely affect her daughters.
“Is it in the community interest for the girls to go on without their mother … Girls require different attention to boys, they just do,” her defence barrister David Galbally said.
But County Court Judge Trevor Wraight said Cook needed to be jailed to reflect the gravity of her crimes.
“This is greed, it’s absolute greed. It’s jet skis and investment properties,” Judge Wraight said.
“I think the offending itself is up there. It was to meet a lavish lifestyle of a family that was already in the top few per cent of earners in the country.”
Cook, who managed more than 160 ANZ employees, was only caught after a junior staff member reported suspicious bank deposits to her husband’s construction company’s account.
WHAT’S INSIDE THE ANZ BANK VAULT?
Cook began working at ANZ in 1997 and was sacked in August 2016 for the thefts.
She immediately confessed after being confronted by internal bank investigators and repaid all of the $311,529.62 she stole.
When quizzed by bank investigators, Cook said her family were “living a life they did not have to live”.
She has also engaged a psychologist to deal with depression and her offending.
For the past year she has been working as a receptionist on a salary far below the $200,000-a-year the bank paid her.
Cook was remanded in custody and will be sentenced next Friday.