Luseane Fatafehi (33) is serving one year imprisonment for false accounting and theft of $56,779 from her employer, the Heilala Vanilla Company.
Justice Cooper sentenced her to 29 months’ imprisonment, the last 17 months suspended for two years on conditions, on 3 December. This was after she pleaded guilty in September to both counts.
In 2022, Ms Fatafehi was employed by Heilala Vanilla Company, and she had the job of liaising between the Ministry that inspected, graded and weighed the vanilla crops and her paying the farmers.
Burnt records
The judge stated that from June to October 2022, Ms. Fatafehi destroyed the records the Ministry gave her, she burnt them. She then compiled false receipts and paid the farmers only a fraction of what they were owed. She kept the difference for herself.
In total she stole $56,779 from the Heilala Vanilla Company. In the latter months of 2022, she confessed all to her sister, who told the owner of Heilala Vanilla Company, Mrs Jennifer Boggiss.
“A victim impact report stated the effect on Mrs Boggiss, the company and family and friends of Ms. Fatafehi and the wider community have been very stark,” the judge stated.
The court heard that Ms. Fatafehi’s family had undertaken to repay the debt and to date $23,716 had been repaid. Their repayment plan has another 14 years to run.
“The Boggiss family had over the years given loans, financial help, payments for college fees to Ms. Fatafehi’s family and they feel deeply and cruelly betrayed, which indeed they were,” he stated.
"Mrs Boggiss first learnt of this matter on Christmas day 2022. It takes little or no imagination to realise how that would then have struck at the heart of their family and all the kindness they had offered Ms. Fatafehi’s family. For her own family this plainly was a deep blow.
“It led to any number of financial hardships and has seen local farmers out of pocket, the Heilala Vanilla business suffering economic woes and, as Mrs Boggiss identified, caused damage within the community at large.”
While Mrs Boggiss and her family through the victim impact statement begged for mercy for Ms. Fatafehi, “that same report states that Ms. Fatafehi had shown no remorse."
In her pre-sentence report, she is a wife and mother. Her husband is not well and suffers from an unspecified condition. She currently is unemployed, and she told the probation officer she was remorseful and had apologised to Mrs. Boggiss.
“It is true that Ms. Fatafehi cooperated with police and admitted what she had done, as noted above, she pleaded guilty. According to the probation report, Ms. Fatafehi stated that she was driven by greed to steal the money. I have not been able to determine why she committed these offences or what the money was spent on.”
The judge stated that the aggravating features was the breach of trust, premeditation, her degree of planning and the length of time that the offences were committed.
He sentenced her to 29 months imprisonment with the last 17 months suspended on two years on the conditions: to report to probation within 24 hours of her release, must complete a life skills course and not to commit any offence punishable by imprisonment. This means she is serving one year in prison.
