Victoria Lewis visited one of Lewis Group subsidiary companies in Pretoria, South Africa. On her way back, an assistant, George Gale, said that her father had fainted in the office. They rushed him to the JHB General hospital. Victoria Lewis was so scared, she drove straight to the JHB General hospital, she was praying all the way for her father to be well. When she left home in the morning, her father was well, and it was rare for her father to be sick. She lost her mother ten years ago due to a car accident. The drunk driver crashed into her car, and she died on the spot.
She was eleven-years-old at that time; her father raised her all alone and he never remarried. Her father was her pillar of strength. She didn’t know what she would do if she lost him. She didn’t want to think about it.
When she arrived at the JHB General hospital, her father had been transferred to the ward and he was awake. She rushed to him crying, “you scared me daddy, what happened?” Her father hugged her, “don’t worry my sweetheart, I’m out of the woods. I received bad news about the company and fainted. The doctor told me that he would keep me overnight for observation.” Victoria looked at her father, “what happened to the company dad?” Patrick Lewis told his daughter that this morning he had a feeling that something was wrong, then he called all his friends and asked if everything was alright with them, but he couldn’t reach his adopted son, Gordon Bolt. He went to the Finance department to look for him, since he was the Finance Director at Lewis Group, he was told that he was not in yet.
While he was in the Finance department, he received a call from one of the suppliers indicating that they hadn’t been paid yet. Patrick Lewis was surprised then he promised to pay them that afternoon. Then he asked the Finance VC Director, Mike Page, to pay the suppliers, then he went back to his office. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen. Mike Page discovered that there were no funds in the company account. He quickly went to Mr Lewis’s office and told him that there were no funds in the company account. Patrick Lewis quickly called his bank, and he was told that he had transferred the company funds to an offshore account. The bank sent him an authorization form with his signature indicating that he indeed instructed them to transfer the company funds to the offshore account.