Danielle Bright pleaded guilty to nine charges of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception in Dubbo Local Court last Wednesday.

The 27-year-old began working at Blackwoods trade store in Dubbo in April 2019 where she was employed as a trade counter assistant.

According to court documents, her role involved serving customers, conducting sales transactions and conducting the end-of-day balance with the eftpos settlement.

In July 2021, Bright became responsible for the daily banking routine after another staff member left.

Police said a week after she took over the daily banking, she began using the company's eftpos machine to make a number of 'refund' transactions onto four different debit cards.

In court documents, between July and September 2021 Bright made a number of refunds amounting to $5983.79.

READ ALSO:

These transactions were made to her personal account, a joint account with her partner, and also to a woman and a man known to Bright.

Her first transaction was made on July 27, where she manually entered card numbers onto the machine to refund $265 to a woman she knew. Another refund of $226 was processed to a man she knew later that day.

A number of other fraudulent transactions took place amounting to $2542.79 between July and September.

According to court documents, on September 10, Bright had a discrepancy with the company over a breach of safety policy, when three of the fraudulent transactions amounting to $950 took place that afternoon.

She returned to work on September 13, when another three transactions took place amounting to $1000, before she resigned at 4pm that day.

Bright briefly returned to work on September 20 to clean up her personal belongings, when she conducted another five transactions amounting to $1000.

Bright's fraudulent activity came under the attention of the company when COVID 19 forced the business to move to click and collect.

On September 21 the company became aware of suspicious transactions from the eftpos machine. Due to COVID there were no sales made in store, and therefore no refunds were warranted.

CCTV inside the store showed Bright at the eftpos machine attempting to cover her actions with a piece of paper, or by walking away from the camera with the eftpos machine in her hand on 27 of the 29 occasions the suspicious transactions were made.

The other two fraudulent incidents by Bright were lost on camera due to the system overwriting.

The incident was reported to police, and officers were granted warrants to see the financial records of the cards used in the fraudulent transactions.

An arrest warrant was executed at Bright's home on December 22 last year, where police found the bank cards of interest and other documents relating to her employment.

She was arrested and taken to Dubbo Police Station where she declined an interview.

In court on Wednesday, defence lawyer Bill Dickens requested the case be adjourned and a sentencing assessment report be prepared.

Bright will return to court for sentence on May 11.