Jail for acccountant who gambled away $878,000 stolen from IGA

Newcastle accountant Narelle Labuts has been jailed for fraud offences committed during her time working at a company that owned IGA supermarkets in the Hunter Valley. Labuts used her position of trust to siphon off close to $880,000, which she told the court she lost gambling. What's next? Labuts has been sentenced to three and a half years behind bars, with a two-year non-parole period. An accountant for a network of IGA supermarkets in New South Wales has been jailed for defrauding $878,000. Narelle Labuts, 61, worked with the Singh Group, which owns 10 IGA stores in the Hunter Valley. She was sacked in 2021 after a bank flagged an unusual transaction. Labuts stole the company's money by using white font on 522 transactions to hide her misconduct over a four-year period, the Newcastle District Court heard. In October 2024, police charged her with obtaining financial advantage by deception and making a false document to obtain a financial advantage. Labuts pleaded guilty at the end of last year. Today she was sentenced to three and a half years in prison with a two-year non-parole period. Judge Tim Gartelmann SC said what began as an opportunistic crime spiralled into something "that required significant planning and organising". "The sentences for fraud offences must deter others to commit them," he said. "They are easy to commit and hard to detect." The court heard Labuts had only returned a fraction of the stolen money, repaying $3,500 while the IGA network clawed back a further $9,000 by refusing to pay her entitlements. At the sentencing hearing Labuts said she was addicted to gambling and that 90 per cent of the embezzled funds had gone into poker machines. Labuts said she knew that what she was doing was wrong thing but was "praying for a big win to return it all back". "The house always wins, so it never eventuated," she said tearfully. Labuts said she was "so incredibly sorry" and acknowledged she had "destroyed the trust [her employer] put in me". The court heard she has since worked as a bookkeeper at a transport and a concreting company, but did not disclose why her employment at the IGA network came to an abrupt end. She said she would "probably" tell future employers about the conviction because it was now common knowledge. Defence barrister Stephen Hopper emphasised that Labuts was addressing her gambling addiction and had been getting counselling since June 2022. Labuts disagreed with a suggestion from the Crown that she only sought help for her gambling problem because she had been caught.