Lloyds worker defrauds 2.4m - sentence?!

[hornetrider]

What will she get? The article seems to imply 'next time' she'll get a custodial. Why not this time? Article states 1m may never be recovered.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19164730

[Du1point8]

she gets nothing much...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2184883/Mi...

these guys all get suspended sentences and will be jailed if not squeaky clean for 2 years.

[limpsfield]

I always loved this about the story:


"At the time she was working as head of fraud and security for digital banking"

[martin84]

limpsfield said:

I always loved this about the story:


"At the time she was working as head of fraud and security for digital banking"

Always happens doesnt it. The one in charge of stuff not being stolen is the one who knows best how to steal it.

[wollowizard]

article said:

She also admitted a single charge of transferring criminal property, the money, which she had defrauded from her employers.

So that means the people she stole from should be dealt with in exactly the same way then.

[Mojooo]

Hefty suspended sentence with community service I would guess.

Worst case jail for 6 months (or 18 months sentence serving 6). the 'problem' with sending her to jail is that you would have to bang her up for years to refeclt the crime - and i doubt they will want to do that.

[Deva Link]

hornetrider said:

The article seems to imply 'next time' she'll get a custodial.

It was her defence counsel saying that. Seems an odd thing to say - implies that she may well do it again.

[johnfm]

The simplest of fraud too - I think she just submitted and approved invoices onto the purchase ledger.

One of the biggest fraud risks for any business - I have seen or heard of it done so many times.

[Somewhatfoolish]

I reckon by "next time" they mean the next time she is in court since for whatever reason she hasn't been sentenced this time.

Someone at my firm nicked just under five million and got five years. I'd link to the news story if it didn't identify who I work for!

He was in a senior position in the back office, but in nothing close to the size of lloyds. I would imagine she's looking at the same sort of time period. Quite possibly longer cause he didn't set out to steal money, it was the traditional make money from the markets from an illegal trading account, then if it goes wrong start betting the firm on it approach. This is huge embezzlement with the money nicked.

fk it, I'm going for 8 years. This is even more serious.

[turbobloke]

johnfm said:

The simplest of fraud too - I think she just submitted and approved invoices onto the purchase ledger.

No segregation of duties?! Unless the submission record was falsified (or wasn't needed) and it was to a company, this sounds really basic as you say.

ETA 5 years

Edited by turbobloke on Wednesday 8th August 07:20

[Derek Smith]

I nicked a kid for theft from employer. Nothing much, just some trousers. There was a suggestion that stock had been going missing fairly regularly but there was nothing to connect this lad with the other items even after searching his home and, considering it was a shop, shoplifting was much more likely. In present day terms the trousers would be worth around £30.

The kid, aged around 23, had two previous, one not connected - can't remember what it was - and one of theft, shoplifting when he was 18/19. His mother said that he'd changed since the previous case. Nice family by the way.

He got two months. There was an appeal and it was suspended but the magistrates felt that abuse of trust was a considerable aggravating factor.

So if we work back from 2 months for £30, that makes it a year for every £150. £2.4m divided by 150 is a very long time inside.

[Digga]

johnfm said:

The simplest of fraud too - I think she just submitted and approved invoices onto the purchase ledger.

One of the biggest fraud risks for any business - I have seen or heard of it done so many times.

Yes. The guy from our accountants who helps with our management accounts has himself stumbled upon two such cases which have been prosecuted . One defendant decided to commit suicide prior to trial and our accountant says he hopes he never finds another - but he keeps looking.

As you say, it's usually a secretary or financial controller in an organisation. One of the ones's our guy found was PA to the boss of a local housing Quango and the scale of the fraud (no business would have missed it on the figuers I saw) tells you a fair bit about the OPM (Other Peoples Money) culture.

[Oilchange]

...so what was the sentence?

[Jasandjules]

I would hope 10 years plus being required to pay it all back. But I won't hold my breath.

[Eric Mc]

johnfm said:

The simplest of fraud too - I think she just submitted and approved invoices onto the purchase ledger.

One of the biggest fraud risks for any business - I have seen or heard of it done so many times.

I wonder what her employment status was? Employees don't tend to submit invoices to their employers. My take would be that she was operating through her own personal service company. I have nothing against personal service companies, but I always think they are innapropriate for those who hold senior managerial positions in organisations, such as heads of department or chief executives.

[Deva Link]

Eric Mc said:

I wonder what her employment status was? Employees don't tend to submit invoices to their employers. My take would be that she was operating through her own personal service company. I have nothing against personal service companies, but I always think they are innapropriate for those who hold senior managerial positions in organisations, such as heads of department or chief executives.

Apparently she was an employee on £70K/yr.

There don't seem to be any details of how she did it - I'm guessing she was approving a £50K/mth invoice for anti-virus software.

[johnfm]

Eric Mc said:

I wonder what her employment status was? Employees don't tend to submit invoices to their employers. My take would be that she was operating through her own personal service company. I have nothing against personal service companies, but I always think they are innapropriate for those who hold senior managerial positions in organisations, such as heads of department or chief executives.

Eric

You missed the point of the fraud. She will have been 'submitting ' false invoices from any number of non existent fake suppliers.

Depending on the systems, if she was then in the workflow to approve the invoices, money wwohld then just land in whatever accounts had been set up in the system.

It requires access to the accounting system to set up a supplier account etc.

[joewilliams]

Eric Mc said:

johnfm said:

The simplest of fraud too - I think she just submitted and approved invoices onto the purchase ledger.

One of the biggest fraud risks for any business - I have seen or heard of it done so many times.

I wonder what her employment status was? Employees don't tend to submit invoices to their employers. My take would be that she was operating through her own personal service company. I have nothing against personal service companies, but I always think they are innapropriate for those who hold senior managerial positions in organisations, such as heads of department or chief executives.

In our case, the accountant was submitting fake invoices from legitimate suppliers, then diverting the payment (by cheque in those days) to himself. The banks apparently counted the signatures on the cheques, but never compared them to the mandate.

For £150k, he got a two year sentence. He'd previously had a suspended sentence for benefit fraud; the judge mentioned it in his sentencing but I don't know if it affected the length.

[Du1point8]

Deva Link said:

Eric Mc said:

I wonder what her employment status was? Employees don't tend to submit invoices to their employers. My take would be that she was operating through her own personal service company. I have nothing against personal service companies, but I always think they are innapropriate for those who hold senior managerial positions in organisations, such as heads of department or chief executives.

Apparently she was an employee on £70K/yr.

There don't seem to be any details of how she did it - I'm guessing she was approving a £50K/mth invoice for anti-virus software.

Still trying to work it out... as even payroll would get surely flag up £50k/mth invoice for her signed by her if she was on £70k a year which sounds like a permanent job.

Maybe they were paying a 3rd party company for services rendered, she owned the company and just pocketed it?

Not quite as good as the moron at a bank I worked at that tried to steal £70 million, placing half in an off shore account and half in account in manchester. Had access to both security systems (plus someone who was supposed to delete his access but didn't when he moved from security to payments), then the fking genius decided to use a key logger on a colleagues keyboard, came in at the weekend and logged in as him and stole the money.

Got flagged up straight away as payments are not done manually at weekends, despite him saying it wasnt him, the fact hes on all the security cameras, was the only one that came in unauthorised at the weekend didnt enter his tiny brain.

Believe hes now got some porridge to do.

[Digga]

Du1point8 said:

Still trying to work it out... as even payroll would get surely flag up £50k/mth invoice for her signed by her if she was on £70k a year which sounds like a permanent job.

As johnfm says above, the payment would not be made to 'her' but would rather be made against fabricated invoices that she had invented and then diverted those payments to her own account.


One of the problems - blind spots - of BACS processing is that you lump lots of individual payments together into each batch, so frauds like this can be much harder to spot.