'Iasinito Mataele Toke (38) who pleaded guilty to serious fraudulent conversion of $39,596 pa'anga from his employer Pacific Energy Ltd. was sentenced to two-years three-months imprisonment.

Hon. Mr Justice Cato on September 18 sentenced the accused from Ngele'ia, at the Nuku'alofa Supreme Court.

The Crown said from January 2018 to May 2019, while employed at Pacific Energy, he fraudulently converted $39,596.15 when he wrote out various Pacific Energy Ltd. cheques totaling the amount and cashed it for himself, instead of paying the company's customers.

In 2018, the accused was promoted to Administration Officer and was responsible for making the company's monthly payments to its customers. These payments were bonuses to the company's customers or petrol stations for purchasing petrol from the company.

The company's method of customer payment was that the accused was to write out a cheque to each customer, with their name and the amount the company owed.

The accused was required to deposit these cheques in the bank accounts of each customer in the outer islands. For the customers in Tongatapu, he was to prepare the cheques for them to pick up.

However, between the months of January 2018 to May 2019 the accused did not record the names of the customers on the payment cheques. Instead, he wrote these cheques out to be paid in cash, allowing himself to cash out the cheques.

He then resigned from the company in June 2019. Shortly after his resignation, the company began receiving complaints from customers in the outer islands about not receiving their monthly payments.

The company investigated further into these complaints and discovered that $39,596.15 of customer payment money was not paid to customers from January 2018 to May 2019.

In addition, the company obtained the company's cheques that were cashed by the accused as well as several customer bank statements from ANZ Bank, between the relevant periods.

These showed that $39,596.15 of Pacific Energy cheques was paid out in cash to the accused, instead of its customers.

In July 2019 a formal complaint was filed with the Police on behalf of Pacific Energy, resulting in his arrest.

Meanwhile, the judge in sentencing the accused to two-years three-months imprisonment suspended the last 12-months on conditions that he does not to commit any offence punishable by imprisonment, placed on probation during suspension and attend an Alcohol Abuse related course.

He was warned him that failure to comply would result in him serving the suspension balance.