Teacher guilty of swindling funds

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

A school teacher who forged receipts for classroom supplies to pocket BD274 in petty cash has been sentenced to three years in prison.

He was fined BD500 and ordered to repay the full amount, down to the last 35 fils.

The court also ordered his deportation once the sentence is served and ordered the confiscation of the forged material.

The First High Criminal Court found the 44-year-old Arab defendant guilty of swindling funds from his workplace over the course of 2023 and 2024.

Scheme

Working at a primary school, he carried out the scheme with the help of a well-meaning cashier who unknowingly processed fake invoices the teacher had submitted.

He claimed to have covered expenses for design and technology supplies using his own money.

The receipts told a different story. Some were invented from scratch while others were genuine but tampered with.

Money

He used the papers to withdraw sums in cash from the school and kept the money for himself.

Investigators found receipts for BD49.500, BD45.540, BD47.300, BD3.960, BD2 and BD22.250.

In one case, he added a zero to an invoice for BD1, turning it into ten. In another, he rewrote a BD45 receipt.

Some of the goods listed had in fact been returned to the shop, yet the money was still paid out.

Fraud

The fraud came to light after the Education Ministry’s risk and audit unit noticed irregularities in the petty cash accounts.

A review team examined the paperwork and picked out seven receipts linked to the teacher.

All were found to be fake or altered.

One shopkeeper confirmed that several of the receipts bearing his store’s name had never been issued by him.

Records The layout, paper and details did not match his records. He confirmed six of them were forged.

Prosecutors said the teacher knew full well what he was doing.

He submitted the papers to make off with school funds and got away with it for months.

His actions, they said, involved both theft and forgery.