When your employer calls the police: workplace theft, false invoices and fraud charges in NSW
It usually starts with a meeting you were not expecting. HR, a manager, sometimes an external investigator, and a folder of transactions. You are suspended, your access is cut off, and you are asked to explain. Somewhere in the following weeks, a detective calls.
Workplace fraud allegations move differently from most criminal matters, because by the time police become involved the evidence has usually already been assembled – by your employer, using systems you had no control over, in an internal process where you had no right to silence and no lawyer in the room. Understanding what happens next, and what you should and should not do during the internal stage, is genuinely decisive.
What you are likely to be charged with
The principal offence is section 192E of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) – fraud. A person who, by any deception, dishonestly obtains property belonging to another, or obtains any financial advantage or causes any financial disadvantage, is liable to imprisonment for 10 years.
Deception is defined broadly in section 192B and includes any deception, by words or other conduct, as to fact or as to law, including conduct that causes a computer, machine or electronic device to make a response the person is not authorised to cause it to make. That last limb covers the modern reality of workplace fraud: entries made in a payroll system, expense claims submitted through an app, invoices generated in accounting software.
Where money or goods were simply taken rather than obtained by deception, the charge may instead be larceny under section 117, or larceny by a clerk or servant under section 156, which carries a higher maximum precisely because of the breach of trust involved. Where documents were created or altered, forgery and related offences under section 253 and following may be added.
The element that decides these cases
Dishonesty. It is assessed according to the standards of ordinary people, and the accused must have known the conduct was dishonest by those standards. That is not a technicality in workplace matters – it is very often the whole contest.
Real cases turn on genuinely contestable questions. Was the expense claim within a policy that was ambiguous or inconsistently applied? Was the practice one that managers knew about and tolerated? Was there an authorisation, formal or informal, that has since been denied? Was the person taking a loan they intended to repay, on an understanding that others in the business had done the same? Was a reconciliation error a deliberate concealment or an accounting mistake?
Employers presenting a brief to police rarely include the material that supports those answers, because they are not looking for it. Obtaining it – policies as they existed then, emails showing practice, evidence of what others did, records of approvals – is the core of the defence work.
The internal investigation problem
This is where most damage is done, and it is done before anyone thinks they need a lawyer.
An internal investigation is not a criminal process. You have no right to silence in it, and refusing to participate can be a disciplinary matter in its own right. But anything you say will be provided to police, and an account given under pressure, without documents, and without advice, becomes the foundation of the prosecution case. Partial admissions offered in the hope of keeping a job are especially damaging, because they concede the conduct while contesting nothing.
The practical advice is to get legal advice before the internal meeting, not after it. Employment and criminal exposure need to be managed together, and the sequencing matters. Once police are involved, the position changes and the right to silence applies fully, as our article on how the right to silence actually works in NSW explains.
Repayment does not end it
This is the most common misconception in the area. People repay the money, often immediately, believing that resolves matters. It does not. The offence was complete when the property or advantage was obtained, and repayment is not a defence.
It is, however, significant mitigation. Restitution made voluntarily and promptly, before any compulsion, carries real weight on sentence and can influence whether a matter proceeds at all. It should be made on advice, documented properly, and not accompanied by admissions that will be used later.
How employers build the brief
Understanding the source of the evidence tells you where its weaknesses are. Almost all of it is generated by systems: accounting and ERP exports, payroll records, point of sale data, access logs, email and messaging archives, and increasingly the output of automated anomaly detection. Forensic accountants are frequently engaged to produce a schedule of allegedly fraudulent transactions.
That schedule is the whole case, and it is rarely tested before it reaches police. Schedules routinely include transactions that were authorised, duplicated entries counted twice, items that reflect an accounting treatment rather than a payment, reimbursements the employee was entitled to, and transactions attributed to a login that several people used. Reconciling the schedule line by line against primary records is the most valuable work in a workplace fraud defence, and it frequently reduces the alleged quantum substantially – which in turn changes jurisdiction, charge selection and sentence.
Shared credentials deserve particular attention. In small businesses especially, logins are commonly shared, passwords are written down, and system access is never revoked when people leave. Where identification of the user rests on a login alone, that is a real evidentiary gap.
Where these matters end up
Quantum drives everything. Smaller matters can be dealt with summarily in the Local Court; larger ones proceed on indictment. Full-time custody is a realistic outcome for sustained, well-planned offending involving significant sums and a serious breach of trust, and courts emphasise general deterrence because these offences are difficult to detect.
The alternatives set out in our guide to primary sentencing outcomes in NSW remain available at the lower end, and a conviction-free outcome is achievable in some matters. But be aware that the traditional reliance on good character has been narrowed where that character facilitated the offending, as we explain in our article on why a clean record may no longer reduce your sentence.
Related exposure often follows. Where funds were moved through accounts, proceeds of crime issues arise, as our article on money mule and proceeds charges explains. Where identity or credentials were used, the offences covered in our article on identity theft and identity fraud in NSW come into play. Professional registration and licensing consequences run in parallel with the criminal matter and on their own timetable.
Contact Us
A workplace fraud allegation puts your liberty, your career and your professional standing in issue simultaneously, and the most important decisions are frequently made before police are ever involved – in an internal meeting where you had no advice.
At National Criminal Lawyers, we act for employees, managers and company officers facing fraud, larceny and false document charges across NSW. We know how internal investigations are conducted and how to protect your position during one, and we know where the dishonesty element in these briefs is genuinely weak.
Call us at 1800 CRIM LAW for a free consultation. Help us help you understand your situation and get you the best outcome possible.
