Locked up, pregnant and sharing a cell with 16 other convicts – is this worth R100 000? Andrea Penrose shared her story with TNW’s Chana Boucher.
Andrea Penrose, an ex-Seekers Travel employee, served eight months of her sentence in prison and is currently under house arrest after being found guilty of defrauding the company of R100 000.
Responsible for recruiting in-house agents for Seekers, she and her ex-husband falsely claimed a recruitment fee for his recruitment company.
“Once you are convicted of the crime and charged, there is no chance of negotiating the sentence or offering to pay the money back. Once you are in court it is the state versus you and the state wants to win,” she says.
Andrea was pregnant with her second child on the day she was sentenced but says the court was unsympathetic about her daughter, even suggesting that she be placed in foster care if necessary.
On the day of sentencing she dropped her daughter off at her mother’s house and told her she would see her later. “I was under the impression that I was not going to jail, but ‘later’ turned out to be a year later,” she says, explaining that once she was sentenced she was removed from society immediately.
Read the full exclusive in TNW April 16.
