It began slowly.

Milton 55-year-old Theresa Dawn Greer had been employed as an accounts administrator at Nelson-based surveying firm Staig & Smith for a year in October 2019 when the first theft took place.

It was a purchase of a $109; one transaction on a company credit card amid a sea of expenses.

Greer created a “false narrative”, coding it in accounting software as something innocuous, business-related.

The following month, she ripped off her employer for another $94 across two more transactions.

Greer began making purchases from TradeMe, Briscoes, The Warehouse, Amazon — mostly home-decor items, furniture and motorcycle parts.

For more than five years she got away with it, the scale of the fraud exploding every year until she was eventually caught in January 2025.

Greer appeared in the Dunedin District Court this week after pleading guilty to seven charges of theft in a special relationship, which represented 327 fraudulent transactions over more than five years — a total of $60,236.

Her role involved collecting receipts made on company credit cards and consolidating them on accounting software.

Managing director Alex Martin said Greer’s scam was only unravelled by chance.

“She was chasing me up … so I went into our bank account just to make sure that I got all the receipts for the credit card,” he said.

When he browsed the transactions for the company card, he noticed a $700 payment to online shopping site AliExpress.

It had been coded as survey targets.

“Then the penny, it just dropped, and I ran to the bank,” Mr Martin told the Otago Daily Times.

The discovery, made once the defendant had moved to Milton and was working remotely, sparked a full investigation as the company had to audit accounts line by line back to 2019.

Police later provided details of the woman’s TradeMe account, which revealed one of her final fraudulent purchases, listed for a survey tripod was actually for a garden shed.

Greer was not the only one with access to the specific credit card, meaning other staff also fell under scrutiny.

Mr Martin described the process as “traumatic”.

“These people have worked faithfully and honestly for you for all these years and then this suddenly brings their character, for a moment, into question.”

He said the firm, which had 18 staff, had a family environment, exacerbating the sense of betrayal.

“A huge, huge breach of trust,” Mr Martin called it. “It was colossal.”

By the start of this year, Greer had repaid the $60,000 but the associated cost of the investigation into the misspending blew out to $40,000.

In court this week, Judge Emma Parsons noted the defendant had no previous convictions and was assessed as being remorseful.

Taking into account Greer’s financial means, the judge ordered she pay further reparation of $10,000 at $50 a week.

The court heard that, despite the prosecution, the defendant had managed to secure another job at a Dunedin business in a similar accounting role.

A director of that company told the ODT they were aware of the woman’s fraud convictions.

So, did they trust Greer?

“A hundred percent,” the man said. “She’s actually really helped us … realising some flaws that we had. But yeah, I’d stand by her 100%.”

Measures were in place to ensure all transactions were approved by others, the director said.

Judge Parsons sentenced Greer to four months’ community detention, imposing curfew hours that would allow for travel to and from her new workplace.

Mr Martin said he had accepted his former staff member’s written apology but the repercussions from her crimes would endure.

“The money was really massive, but actually, the breach of trust is the thing that you take with you for the rest of your life.”

Swindling spree

2019: 3 thefts ($203)

2020: 24 ($2332)

2021: 37 ($6507)

2022: 72 ($12,938)

2023: 91 ($14,132)

2024: 94 ($22,974)

2025: 6 ($1148)

 

rob.kidd@odt.co.nz