A financial manager who went to extraordinary lengths to steal from his employer by creating a fictitious company to receive the ill-gotten funds was on Wednesday sentenced to 12 years behind bars.

For two years the brazen thefts went unnoticed as Jaco Scheepers siphoned more than R2m from Shopfit  — but as he slowly depleted the North End company’s resources, his colleagues felt the pinch as many had to be laid off.      ..