A Fondation Beyeler cashier accused of embezzling nearly CHF1 million ($1.15 million) from the popular Basel arts institution has been sentenced by a city court to three years and seven months in prison. The fifty-four-year-old woman was found guilty of having diverted funds from museum ticket sales to her own pockets in a scam perpetrated over the course of more than a decade. She was additionally ordered to pay a fine of roughly $11,500 and to restore the filched francs to the foundation, along with the accrued interest.
The clerk, who was employed at the museum via an outside firm, ISS Facility Services AG, started at the Fondation Beyeler as a cashier in 2008 before rising to the position of manager in 2010. In the ensuing years, she used a variety of tactics to surreptitiously take money from the till. These included selling tickets without noting the sale; using coworkers’ cash register codes to void tickets; selling “emergency” tickets, intended for use only when the ticket system was out of order; and selling the same ticket twice. To carry this last scam off, the cashier would inform a visitor that the ticket printer was broken and would provide the person with a receipt to gain entry. She would then sell the printed ticket to another visitor.
Colleagues became suspicious when they discovered canceled sales under their names that they had not made. Management was alerted, and the woman was fired in 2019. Investigators summarily discovered that she had used the pilfered proceeds to fund a lavish lifestyle that included designer clothes, gambling, travel, and the purchase of four luxury cars, though she possessed no driver’s license.
The Fondation Beyeler typically welcomes 360,000 visitors annually. The cost of entry is CH25 ($28.50), meaning that the larcenous salesclerk made off with nearly a month’s worth of ticket revenues.
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