Tendai Muererwa
MUTARE – A 25 year old supervisor from Hobhouse One in Mutare has been handed an effective two year prison sentence following her conviction for defrauding her employer of more than US$17,000 to finance her own retail boutique.
Michellene Muzenda was sentenced to six years in prison when she appeared before Mutare regional magistrate Anne Ndiraya on Tuesday. However, the court suspended two years of the sentence for five years on condition of good behavior, and another two years were suspended on condition that she reimburses the stolen funds, leaving her to serve two years effective behind bars.
The court heard that Muzenda was employed as a supervisor by local businesswoman Nomsa Chave Chiadzwa, overseeing operations across two retail shops. Her duties included collecting cash from automated teller machine operators, balancing daily cash sales, entering entries into the cash sales book, and ensuring all records matched ATM data. She was also entrusted as the custodian of the safe keys where daily takings were stored.
Prosecutor Chris Munyuku revealed that Muzenda routinely strictly enforced cash management rules on subordinates ensuring tellers with cash variances had deficits deducted from their salaries while secretly manipulating records to cover her own tracks.
The fraudulent scheme unraveled in mid March when Chave Chiadzwa ordered a cross audit among her supervisors for the period spanning February to March 2026.
While Muzenda reported zero variances in her audit of a colleague, supervisor Tendai Chitambirofa discovered extensive discrepancies in the records managed by Muzenda. The matter was immediately reported to the police, leading to Muzenda’s arrest and an initial recovery of US$700 in cash.
Following her arrest, Muzenda led detectives to her own shop located at Tinmac Mall in Mutare, where police recovered a wide array of merchandise bought with the stolen money. The seized proceeds of crime included clothing, handbags, towels, footwear, perfumes and large teddy bears.
Subsequent forensic investigations including a digital extraction from her iPhone 13 by the ZRP Cyber Laboratory and an independent forensic audit covering the period between November 2025 and March 2026 confirmed that Muzenda falsified daily sales books against enterprise resource planning data. In total, the business suffered a financial loss of US16, 241.05 alongside US400 worth of missing merchandise.
