A former employee of dairy processor and exporter the Sutton Group has been sentenced to prison and another to home detention for fraud and dishonesty offences.
Paul Michael Normington, 33, and Jin Weifeng, 28, had admitted charges laid by the Serious Fraud Office.
Normington faced 17 charges of theft, dishonestly using a document and taking secret commissions as well as one of accessing a computer system for dishonest purpose. He was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment.
Jin Weifeng faced 11 charges of theft, dishonestly using a document and taking secret commissions. He was sentenced to five months' home detention and ordered to pay $25,000 reparation.
The Serious Fraud Office said the pair combined to defraud Sutton either by the creation of false invoices, theft of product or by receiving secret commissions from a supplier to the company.
During the course of the investigation, the SFO discovered that Normington also copied electronic files from the company's server to assist him starting his own business in competition with Sutton.
