Women jailed for stealing millions of dollars in phone credit

Last Updated on Wednesday, 5 October 2016, 6:11 by Denis Chabrol

Three women, who were involved in the 2008-2009 Telecoms Solutions theft were on Tuesday sentenced to four years imprisonment.

The charge against Melissa Naughton, Oladara Christian, and Candacie Marshall is that between June 25, 2008 and November 23, 2009 they conspired with others to embezzle about GYD$48M in credit stolen from their then employer Telecoms Solutions.

When the charge was first read to them in 2011, the trio had pleaded not guilty.

On August 31, 2016, the three were found guilty of the offense by Magistrate Leron Daly, after it was found that the prosecution had, beyond reasonable doubt, proven its case against them.

Naughton,39, and Christian,28 were employed as cashiers during the time the crime was committed, and they were responsible for selling large amounts of Digicel credit via a computerised system, while Marshall, 26, was allegedly the one who would, from time to time, solicited the customers.

Police investigators had found that Norton and Christian had invalidated several transactions which were written off, after which they would re-validate those transactions and sell them to persons and receive the proceeds for themselves, while Marshall sold the transactions to persons but the money was never placed in the company’s account.

Before handing down the sentence, Chief Magistrate Leron Daly considered the fact that they were all adults and of sound mind and understanding, and therefore mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions.

She said that employees should not exploit and take advantage of their employers and both her court and society condemns the act.