Executive fleeces childcare firm of $138,300

New Zealand's largest early childhood education provider has been ripped off nearly $140,000 by a senior staff member.

Katrina Maree Scopas was supposed to be sentenced yesterday in the Manukau District Court after pleading guilty to 10 fraud charges but the matter was adjourned until next month.

Scopas was a senior executive at Kidicorp - which cares for 9000 children in nearly 100 centres throughout the country - and used her position of trust to funnel $138,319.80 into her own bank accounts using cheques, credit cards and company funds.

Despite the guilty plea, Scopas has told people that she was made redundant, and has yet to make reparation to Kidicorp.

Her lawyer Paul Davison, QC, yesterday asked Judge Semi Epati to delay sentencing so Scopas could gain access to money tied up in property to pay reparation to Kidicorp.

The fraud went undetected for 12 months until late November, when a fellow staff member at the Kidicorp headquarters in Manukau saw her rifling through mail to be sent to the owner, Wayne Wright, in Tauranga.

Once alerted, Mr Wright conducted over a weekend an internal audit of her spending, discovering a "trail of potential problems", then drove to Auckland to confront Scopas in person.

Her company car and credit card were confiscated immediately and a few hours later, a representative of Scopas called Mr Wright to admit guilt.

Mr Wright told the Weekend Herald that Scopas began stealing money shortly after she was given the authority to sign off capital spending in November 2007.

Some money was spent by credit card or cheques written to supposed suppliers. But most of the money was deposited into her bank account after she approved electronic payments - after she had changed the account numbers to her own.

Most of the suppliers contacted after the fraud was discovered had never heard of Kidicorp, said Mr Wright.

"It looked legitimate. We would never have found it, or [not] for a long time, except for those fortunate series of events.

"She progressively bled us each month," said Mr Wright.

Ten charges of fraud were laid by police and Scopas pleaded guilty in March.

Despite the early admission of guilt, she has not repaid any of the stolen money and told people that Kidicorp had made her redundant, according to Mr Wright's victim impact statement.

"What was a tight-knit workplace has been shattered," he wrote.

"It was devastating for some team members to discover the extent of Scopas' betrayal and dishonesty and devastating for some of them to find Scopas had implicated them in some of her dishonesty."

A search of Companies Office records show she lived in Kohimarama, Auckland, with her husband Andrea, but that property was sold in February for $860,000.