Charity number-cruncher jailed for £480,000 fraud 1

Finance | Celina Ribeiro | 10 Feb 2009

The head of accounts at a youth organisation has been jailed for more than three years after admitting stealing more than £479,000 from her employer.

Lesley Pickens, an employee of the charity Rathbone for more than 20 years, admitted to a decade-long campaign of using false invoices to transfer more than £479,000 into her personal bank accounts. Investigations discovered that the 59-year-old had made 132 near-monthly payments to herself from February 1998 to June 2008.

She admitted 25 counts of fraud and was sentenced to three years and four months in prison at Manchester Crown Court on 6 February.

The charity called in police in the middle of last year after suspicions arose over some payments. Pickens reportedly soon admitted her actions to police, claiming to have been suffering from financial difficulties.

Compulsive behaviour

But PC Jo Shaw, who had made the initial arrest, said it was unlikely the crimes were the result of financial distress. “Pickens thought she could get away with what she was doing and the longer it went on the more compulsive it became,” the officer said.

In sentencing the former charity worker, Judge Michael Henshell said that “the effect of that money going from the charity must have been considerable”.

While it took more than ten years to detect the fraud, chief executive of Rathbone Dr Richard Williams commended the charity’s vigilance.

“We are pleased that this issue is now fully resolved. We are also very pleased that our internal financial procedures enabled us to identify the problem,” he said.

“Our insurance arrangements have in any event made sure that Rathbone’s work with young people has not been affected at all by this fraud.”

Who's Who: Celina Ribeiro

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Don Yule
Consultant
11 Feb 2009

What sort of audit was going on at this place?

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