Accounts payable fraud is is a key risk for any organisation
A man was “greedy” for a more lavish lifestyle when he defrauded an indigenous grants organisation of more than $250,000, a court has heard.
Mark Anthony Davis, 29, from Nundah, took the money between February 2010 and August 2011 when he was working for the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander College for Health, Education and Training.
The Brisbane District Court heard on Friday Davis was working as a curriculum development manager when he arranged for the organisation to pay about $139,000 to a company owned by him for education services he never provided.
He failed to get the contract approved by the organisation’s board, and had no power to authorise it himself, the court heard.
Davis organised a similar fraudulent contract for $113,000 a short time later when he was acting CEO.
The court was told he spent the money on a car, furniture, a holiday to the US and a home theatre system.
The rest he spent on his addictions to gambling, drugs and alcohol.
None of the money has been repaid.
Davis pleaded guilty on Friday to two counts of aggravated fraud as an employee.
In sentencing him, Judge Terry Martin described the offence as a “severe breach of trust“.
“This was a deliberate and persistent fraud for greedy purposes,” he said.
Judge Martin sentenced Davis, who was working for Queensland Health when arrested in late 2011, to five years’ jail.
He will be eligible for parole after serving 20 months.
(Source: Christine Flatley, “Greedy’ man stole $250,000 from govt”, AAP, 25 January 2013)
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