A 33 year old accountant working at an estate agent's office near Durham has been given an eight week prison sentence, suspended for a year, after making 11 payments to her own accounts for sums totalling over £10,000.
Louise Nelson had worked for five years at Placenorth Ltd, a family-owned agency at Meadowfield near Durham. Her salary had been reduced from £20,000 to £16,000 in 2010.
Her lawyer, Thomas Laffey, said: The whole basis of her outgoings and financial commitments was based on a salary suddenly reduced by £4,000. She took out credit cards to pay bills, but it became a vicious circle as she struggled to keep her head above water.
Nelson was arrested last September and told police she started offending when she faced eviction from her home following a divorce.
She will be supervised by the Probation Service over the next year.
Comments
We had the same thing happen to us but our rogue stole 170k. He served 20 months. This equates to 102k a year for a job. You cannot get that on the rigs. What sort of deterrent is that.
He came out of jail, got another job and started writing cheques to himself again. That shows what type of deterrent it is. He obviously thinks it is worth it.
I have been on the end of a staff member gone bad, thanks to a discreet consultancy service the problem was identified, corrected and my reputation is solid. I think too many of us trust our staff a little too much.