Cape Town travel company accountant jailed for multi-million rand inside job

A Cape Town accountant who spent more than five years quietly siphoning money from the travel company that employed her will spend the next 15 years behind bars, Cape {town} Etc reports.

Cassandra Candice Labuschagne (42) was sentenced in the Cape Town Regional Court this week on 134 counts of theft and money laundering, bringing to a close a case that cost her former employer R17 352 337, a little over R17 million, between January 2019 and June 2024, according to the South African Police Service.

#sapsWC [MONEY-LAUNDERING ACCOUNTANT FACES 15 YEARS IN PRISON]

The Cape Town Regional Court sentenced Cassandra Candice Labuschagne to 15 years direct imprisonment for 134 counts of theft and money laundering.

Labuschagne was arrested in September 2025, after defrauding a Cape Town based travel company she worked for as an accountant. The company suffered a total loss of R17 352 337-00 from the period of January 2019 until June 2024. Labuschagne created a fictitious platform on the company’s banking site, that allowed her access to the company’s banking system. She proceeded to register her own company and made several payments to her company. The discrepancy was picked up by forensic investigators while doing the company’s financial audits.

A case was opened and assigned to Detective Sergeant Arno Julian Cupido of the Western Cape Commercial Crime Investigation Unit. He conducted a thorough investigation and obtained subpoenas for bank statements of the 19 bank accounts the accused used in the commission of her crime. On 17 September 2025, the 42-year-old was arrested and remained in custody as bail was successfully opposed.

Labuschagne entered into a plea and sentence agreement and was sentenced to 15 years direct imprisonment. She was further declared unfit to possess a firearm in terms of the Firearms Control Act 60 of 2000. #Sentencing ML
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— SA Police Service (@SAPoliceService) November 11, 2026

A loophole hiding in plain sight

What makes this case stand out is how ordinary it looked from the inside. Labuschagne was not an outsider hacking her way in. She was the person trusted to keep the books.

Police say she built a fictitious platform on the company’s banking site, which gave her a backdoor into its banking system. From there, she registered a company of her own and started routing payments to it. One transfer at a time, over five and a half years, the money walked out the door.

Nobody noticed until forensic investigators sat down with the company’s financial audits and found figures that refused to add up.

Following the money across 19 accounts

Once a case was opened, it landed on the desk of Detective Sergeant Arno Julian Cupido of the Western Cape Commercial Crime Investigation Unit. His job was to untangle a trail that ran through 19 separate bank accounts, and he obtained subpoenas for the statements of every one of them.

That paperwork is what turned suspicion into a prosecutable case. Labuschagne was arrested on 17 September 2025 and has been in custody ever since, after police successfully opposed bail.

Rather than go to trial, she entered into a plea and sentence agreement with the state. In practical terms, that means she admitted to the charges in exchange for a sentence both sides could agree on. The court handed down 15 years of direct imprisonment, no suspended portion, no option of a fine.

She was also declared unfit to possess a firearm under the Firearms Control Act, a standard order in serious convictions that strips a person of the right to hold a gun licence.

If the story feels familiar, that is because Cape Town’s commercial crime courts have been busy. In June, a 62-year-old serial fraudster was also handed an effective 15 years in the Commercial Crimes Court in the City for fraud, money laundering and forgery, as reported by TygerBurger.

The theft went undetected for more than half a decade and it was an outside forensic audit, not the day-to-day bookkeeping, that finally caught it.

With the plea deal signed and sentence handed down, there is no trial to follow. Labuschagne begins her 15-year term immediately, with the time she has already spent in custody since September 2025 counting towards it.

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Also read:

Former attorney jailed 10 years for R39.8m theft and money laundering

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The post Cape Town travel company accountant jailed for multi-million rand inside job appeared first on Cape Town ETC.