It was May 2012 when Rebecca Bell first defrauded the Scouts.
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Acting in her role as trusted treasurer of the 1st Warilla Group, she walked into the Oak Flats branch of the Bendigo Bank one morning and cashed a $2000 club cheque.
Committee members, then police, would later discover that Bell had altered the cheque from its original amount of $200 to the new amount of $2000, and that Bell had pocketed the difference for herself.
But her thievery would not be exposed for another 17 months after that first crime, and by then, Bell had managed to fleece Scouts of almost $14,000 in cash, most of which had been earmarked for hall upgrades and sending kids to camp.
A fellow committee member with banking experience uncovered anomalies with the club’s accounts in October 2013, having temporarily taken over treasury duties while Bell and her family were in Europe on holiday.
Banking records were subsequently taken to police, who charged Bell with more than a dozen fraud-related offences.
She pleaded not guilty to the charges, however on the morning the matter was listed for hearing agreed to plead guilty to five counts of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception.
The remaining charges were dropped.
Police documents tendered to the court said Bell repeated the cheque scam again in 2013, in June and July, each time adding another digit to a cheque already co-signed by another committee member then taking the extra money for herself.
In June, Bell pocketed $1000 after turning a $200 cheque into a $1200 cheque, while in July, she added a 9 in front of $70 to gain a $900 windfall.
Meantime, Bell had another con going at the same time that involved skimming money from grants awarded to Scouts by the State Government.
The court heard in late 2012 the Warilla group had picked up $12,000 in grants to build a storage shed and upgrade the ceiling in the scout hall.
Bell was responsible for sourcing tradesmen for the work and providing ‘progress reports’ and invoices to Scouts Australia for payment.
In December that year Bell created a fake, $8,000 invoice from her father's company for concreting work that had supposedly been done as part of the storage shed construction and sent it off to Scouts Australia.
When the invoice was paid a few days later, Bell had her mother withdraw the money immediately and hand it to her.
Bell then gave her father $1,500 as a ‘retainer’, and told him she was going to return the remaining money to the Scout group until the job was done.
However, the money was never returned, with police claiming Bell pocketed the cash.
Police said she also carried out a similar scam involving her brother-in-law’s company for apparent work on the hall ceiling.
Police confirmed no work on either projects had been carried out, despite the fact Bell had sent progress reports to Scouts Australia in August 2013 saying both jobs were almost complete.
Police confirmed neither Bell’s father or brother-in-law were involved in the illegal activity, nor had any knowledge of it.
Bell will return to court in April for sentencing.