A former West End Development Corporation employee has been jailed for 3½ years after swindling the government quango out of more than $120,000.

Maria Bento was working as a residential property manager for the organisation when she committed the offences between December 2017 and February 2021. She also rented a property from the quango at that time.

The 49-year-old, who earlier pleaded guilty to charges of evasion of liability by deception, forgery and obtaining a money transfer by deception, was given an additional six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.

At a sentencing hearing in the Supreme Court on Friday, Puisne Judge Juan Wolffe condemned Bento’s actions, saying that she acted with “ingenuity, selfishness and impunity“.

He said: “She exploited for her own gain a system set up to assist some of our most vulnerable citizens.

“She felt compelled to bite the hand that fed her.”

Mr Justice Wolffe added that the $122,287.62 that Wedco was duped out of by Bento “could have gone to providing a home for a family desperately in need”.

At a pre-sentencing hearing in January, the Crown called for a five-year jail term, while defence attorney Jerome Lynch KC argued that any custodial sentence should be either partly or fully suspended.

Prosecutors claimed that in early 2021, a Wedco internal audit discovered that while Bento should have paid $117,000 in rent to the quango, she had actually paid only $11,047.28 — a shortfall of $105,952.72.

The audit unearthed fraudulent accounting documents, which Bento had submitted to get a reduction in rent on her home at the time at Dockyard Terrace in Sandys.

A number of the documents approved rental reductions for the property Bento was living in then and had apparently been signed by the chief financial officer and another senior manager — both of whom asserted that they had not signed the paperwork.

Bento also provided Wedco with documents seeking $16,334.09 in reimbursement for courses she had taken at several institutions in Britain, including Bristol University and the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives as part of her training.

An investigation later revealed that Bento never took the courses.

Wedco had overseen the development of affordable housing and commercial property in the West End and also acted as landlord for those properties.

Last year, it merged with the Bermuda Land Development Company to form a new entity, the Bermuda Land Management Company.

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