Roofing company clerk's 19-year looting spree ends in jail time

For 19 years Linda Ebersohn, 59, looted her company’s coffers, pouring nearly R13m into her own bank account and those of her family members.

On Friday she admitted to 867 counts of theft when she appeared in the Middelburg regional court.

She and her husband and their two children were arrested in November 2018. The charges against the other three were dropped after she pleaded guilty.

Ebersohn was employed by Middelburg Dakkappe, a roofing company in Middelburg, as a debtor and credit clerk.

From 1998 until 2017 she channelled cash into her and family members’ personal back accounts, as well as several fictitious creditors’ accounts. She also used existing creditor particulars to siphon from the company.

The Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigation (Hawks) Middelburg-based serious commercial crime investigation unit took on the investigation and she was arrested, along with her husband and two children, and charged on November 27 2018.

On Friday Ebersohn was sentenced to 15 years behind bars, suspended for five years on condition she is not convicted of a similar offence during the suspension period.

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