PHOTO: Property Manager. FILE
According to the ODT a rental property manager stole more than $9000 from her Alexandra employer over two years before her offending came to light.
When Shelley Ann Cockburn was finally caught, the 37-year-old Omakau resident told police she had been struggling financially, the problem had snowballed and she could see no way out other than to keep stealing.
Cockburn began working for LJ Hooker Alexandra in 2019, with part of her role being to receive bond payments from tenants and lodging the money with Tenancy Services.
After six months in the job, Cockburn stopped lodging bonds and began moving the payments into an unallocated company bank account.
When she occasionally received bond and rent payments in cash, she was supposed to record them in a receipt book, then deposit the money in a company account.
However, she kept the cash for her personal use at least six times between August 2020 and July last year.
She also falsified records on the company’s property management software in order to receive $3000 in incentive bonus payments she was not entitled to.
Before taking a week off last October, she reluctantly agreed to the company director’s request to leave her work phone and laptop behind.
While she was away, another employee uncovered anomalies, including Cockburn’s failure to lodge bonds since 2020.
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