BERMUDA – A Supreme Court judge sentenced a former employee of the West End Development Corporation (WEDCO) to three-and-a-half years in jail after she was convicted of stealing from the semi-public administrative body of more than US$120,000.
In passing sentence on 49-year-old Maria Bento on Friday, Justice Juan Wolffe, said her actions had prevented WEDCO from “providing a home for a family desperately in need.”
He said, “She exploited for her own gain a system set up to assist some of our most vulnerable citizens. She felt compelled to bite the hand that fed her.”
The court heard that the former residential property manager had committed the offences amounting to the US$122,287.62 between December 2017 and February 2021 and that she had also rented a property from WEDCO at that time.
Bento had pleaded to charges of evasion of liability by deception, forgery and obtaining a money transfer by deception.
She was given an additional six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, with the judge saying that she acted with “ingenuity, selfishness and impunity“.
At a pre-sentencing hearing in January, the prosecution had called for a five-year jail term, with the defence argued that any custodial sentence should be either partly or fully suspended.
The prosecution said that in early 2021, a WEDCO internal audit discovered that while Bento should have paid $117,000 in rent to the semi-public administrative body outside the civil service but receiving financial support from the government, she had actually paid only $11,047.28, a shortfall of $105,952.72.
The audit unearthed fraudulent accounting documents, which Bento had submitted to get a reduction in rent on her home at the time.
Bento also provided WEDCO with documents seeking US$16,334.09 in reimbursement for courses she had taken at several institutions in Britain, including Bristol University and the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives as part of her training.
An investigation later revealed that Bento never took the courses. (CMC)
