A servo worker has been busted nicking tens of thousands of dollars during an alleged two-year cash register heist – as her devastated boss responds.
Peri Hortis, who runs the Saviges Road Fast & Ezy petrol station in Victoria’s Gippsland region, claims the 35-year-old woman stole more than $43,000 in cash between August 2022 and July 2024.
CCTV footage from above the cash register shows the employee counting $50 bills, checking to see if anyone is nearby and then casually pocketing the money.
Mr Hortis claims that the woman, who worked at his company for four years, took cash from the cash register more than a hundred times.
He told it A current issue the woman was able to fly under the radar because she told him she was processing the money as a lottery payout.
However, the penny dropped six months ago when Mr Hortis’s accountant warned that ‘some things were not correct in my books’.
While analyzing his company data, he discovered that there were scratch card payouts of over $700 in a single day.
“Someone winning €700 scratchies in one day is quite a lot,” he said.
CCTV footage shows the woman counting $50 notes before putting the money in her pocket (pictured)
Peri Hortis, who employed the woman for more than four years, says it will take him at least a year to recover from the alleged $43,000 theft.
‘I looked back at the trades and video footage from the two weeks I had and then realized she was doing it every second day.
“She allegedly did it over 100 times and it cost just over $43,000 in cash.
‘It’s a lot of money. I’m devastated.’
On another occasion, footage shows the woman scanning and opening cigarettes before processing a scratchie payout worth the pack and drinks.
Mr Hortis claimed that when he confronted her, she admitted to the alleged theft.
“She admitted it to me. “She said she had to pay for her daughters’ braces and she would pay the money back,” he said.
‘I told her she was fired. Give me the keys to the store, you’re out.”
Mr Hortis reported the woman’s alleged crimes to police on July 11, but says little has happened in the three months since.
Two weeks later, he pursued the senior officer on the case and was asked to sign the paperwork and return it to him, which he did in early August.
“They thought it was a slam-dunk investigation, but I never heard from them again,” Hortis says.
Police say they interviewed the woman as part of an ongoing investigation.
Mr Hortis’s Saviges Road Fast & Ezy petrol station in Gippsland
Mr Hortis said he had been generous to the woman, giving her $50 worth of fuel every week and giving her a new iPhone for Christmas last year.
“You become friends and family with (staff). They are not just a number,” he said.
The woman has since found a new job at a nearby supermarket, but denied her dishonesty when A Current Affair approached her.
Mr. Hortis indicates that it will take him at least a year to make up for his losses.
“I can’t really hire someone full-time until I supplement that income that I would have paid to someone else,” he said.
“The dishonesty, the betrayal and the lies are just pathetic.”
