A woman who stole more than $352,000 from a Tasmanian awning manufacturer has been released from prison on parole.
Allison Mae Leslie, 41, was granted parole by the Parole Board of Tasmania on July 24.
She was due to be released on August 3. Her parole runs until April 29, 2028.
She was jailed for three-and-a-half years in November 2024 after pleading guilty to 10 counts of fraud.
The Supreme Court of Tasmania heard she committed about 490 separate acts of fraud between November 2016 and February 2020.
The offending cost her employer, Optimo Awnings, $352,085.65.
Leslie worked in the company’s administration office, where she used her access to its payment systems to pay herself and her personal expenses.
She then falsified accounting records to cover her tracks, with most of the money going straight into her own bank accounts.
It was not the first time she had stolen from an employer.
Between 2010 and 2011 she manipulated a computer system to steal $36,135 in client payments from a Launceston eye hospital where she worked, landing her 10 months in prison with most of that suspended.
She did not tell Optimo about that conviction when she was hired.
Sentencing her in 2024, Justice Robert Pearce said Leslie had taken advantage of her position to commit “another gross breach of trust on an even greater scale” while keeping up a false appearance of honesty.
“Although you are to be sentenced for ten counts, you committed almost 500 acts of dishonesty over more than three years,” he said.
Leslie told the board she had been diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder and believed being undiagnosed and unmedicated at the time played a role in her offending.
She told the parole board she was not the same person who committed the crimes.
The board said it had weighed the serious nature of her offending but accepted a recommendation from Community Corrections that she be released with conditions.
Those conditions include being assessed for a mental health care plan and attending any treatment it recommends.
