By Charles Gladden
DANGRIGA, Stann Creek District, Mon. July 28, 2025
The former administrator of the Southern Regional Hospital, 49-year-old Nasley Sommerville, an accountant of Pomona Village who was dismissed from government due to her suspected involvement in the embezzlement of funds from the institution, is once more being accused of theft, after she was allegedly caught using fraudulent cheques at her new place of employment.
On Wednesday, July 24, Jenny Shadini Zabaneh, an employee of Mayan King Company in Dangriga, reported to police that Sommerville may have been siphoning company funds by replacing the checks which were issued to make bank deposits/payments with alternate checks from a different series.
Zabaneh told police that Sommerville, who is employed by Mid-South Investment Ltd., a sister company of Mayan King, was issued cheque #442 for $10,000, payable to Meridian Enterprise Ltd. Zabaneh said she signed the cheque, took a photo of it, and returned it to Sommerville for deposit at Heritage Bank.
But when she inspected the company’s online account, Zabaneh discovered that a cheque with a different number, not the one she signed, had been deposited instead. When she did a further investigation, she found that the records showed cheques issued in the 400-series, while the bank statements made reference to cheques in the 200-series.
This discovery convinced Zabaneh that Sommerville was using two separate cheque books, one in the 200 series and another in the 400 series, without authorization, and forging signatures on the 200-series cheques. There were also multiple inconsistencies in the amounts of money listed on the issued cheques in that 200-series.
As a result, a search warrant was executed at Sommerville’s office, leading to the discovery and seizure of two Heritage Bank cheque books along with cheque #442, all of which were collected by police as evidence.
Sommerville was charged with forgery and three counts of theft, since the evidence indicated that the scheme had been carried out for some weeks.
Notably, in 2013, Sommerville was accused of embezzling over a quarter of a million dollars from the Southern Regional Hospital by fraudulently signing and drawing on 189 government cheques.
