PERTH-BASED pharmacy owner, Diana Quan, believes she will never recover from the impact of her accountant stealing millions of dollars from the business.
Speaking after former family friend and bookkeeper, Moe Moe Myint Kelly, was sentenced to four years and eight months behind bars for swindling $2 millions from the Busy Bee Pharmacy in Northbridge, between 2011 and 2018.
Perth District Court heard that Kelly was hired to look after the store's books in 2009, but in 2010 when the business was struggling she agreed to work without pay until things improved.
However, the 65-year-old accountant began diverting cash from the daily takings into her personal accounts.
The Court was told that Kelly's bank statements showed that she would pilfer sums ranging from $1,000 to $15,000, and her activity was only discovered after "a minor error" in 2018 led to an audit of the store's books.
A total of 400 instances of theft were discovered, with prosecutors reporting that between 2011 and 2015 Kelly lost close to $1.2 million gambling at Crown Casino.
Sentencing Kelly, Judge David MacLean order that she must serve a non-parole period of two years and eight months.
Judge MacLean rejected suggestions that Kelly had shown remorse for her actions, saying, "you have a ringside seat to their suffering and notwithstanding that ringside seat, you decided to continue on in this very serious course of criminal conduct".
"They were going backwards because you were stealing so ruthlessly from them," he said.
Quan said Kelly's jail term was not enough.
"She took 10 years of my life," she said.
"It's been an emotional toll.
"It's brought up a lot of emotions.
"It was a hard time for us and it continues to be a hard time, we'll never recover from this, we're just a small family business and we work really, really hard."
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