Angela Clift, an employee of Keith Pattinson estate agents in Newcastle, has been sentenced to two years and four months in prison for stealing almost £400,000 from her employers.
She admitted theft at Newcastle Crown Court. Jailing her, Judge Tim Gittins said: “The scale of offending is breathtaking, it was vast.”
Clift, 48, of West Denton, was a trusted manager who was highly respected by her bosses. She worked as a rental manager when she began to divert large amounts of money to her own account to fund a lavish lifestyle. The deception lasted for over ten years.
The court heard that colleagues became suspicious when a pair of designer sunglasses worth £500 were delivered to her at work.
When police visited her home they found a number of expensive handbags, clothes, shoes and a VW Tiguan. An Audi A3 was taken from her partner’s home.
Clift worked for the company for about 15 years. Her role was to collect rent and pass on the proceeds to landlords, less the estate agent’s commission, but instead she stole an average of £40,000 a year for ten years.
The deception was uncovered by the finance director, Susan Moore, who worked closely with Clift when she became suspicious last year. She conducted an investigation and found Clift had been banking funds meant for her employer into her own account.
She tried to say it was a one-off incident at first and then claimed it was because her partner had a gambling habit. It was subsequently discovered that between 2005 and 2015 she stole £397,896.
At sentencing Caroline Pattinson, managing director at the estate agent, said in a witness impact statement: “The theft by Angela has had a huge impact on us.
“A few weeks prior to the theft being discovered we presented Angela with a bottle of champagne and a bunch of flowers as a gesture of thanks for 15 years of continuous service.
“At the time of her dismissal Angela was one of our longest serving and most trusted employees. The discovery that she had spent the vast majority of that time stealing funds from the company came as a huge shock and also then brought into question the trust that we place with all members of staff.
“As a company we consider ourselves a family and she was considered a close member of that family.
“In stealing from the company, Angela potentially put the jobs of 180 members of staff at risk.
“To have been deceived by a close colleague on such a scale over such a period of time has been devastating to everyone who worked with her. She was incredibly trusted and completely abused that trust.”
Judge Tim Gittins added: “The effect on the company was potentially devastating and I’ve no doubt it has affected the ability of the company to invest and expand in these difficult times.”
Shaun Routledge, defending Clift, said: “Miss Pattinson doesn’t think there is any remorse but the remorse is heartfelt and she is extremely embarrassed and sorry about what she did.”
More here
A sad and sorry state of affairs, but her employer should have noticed sooner.
As a completely unrelated aside, my brand new independent auditing business has just launched.
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Shocking and disgraceful – very devious. Pattinsons is a family business that have been around for years its very sad that a member of staff that was employed by them for so long could do such a thing. That’s why con artists thrive, they have clever ways of duping even the most diligent of employers. Best of luck to Pattinsons, I know they will continue to thrive.
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“In stealing from the company, Angela potentially put the jobs of 180 members of staff at risk.”
Adding some much-needed perspective and realism here, at a rate of £40k per annum it would have put two or three jobs at risk, not 180…
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Just sounds like sheer incompetence by the business owner and the accounting team.
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I note you got 4 dislikes for that comment, however it does raise the point … what on earth were they doing with their accounts, any organisation that big needs to take a long hard look in the mirror, it should have been noticed in the first year.
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I’ve (so far) got 6 dislikes for pointing out that £40k doesn’t pay for 180 staff, Woodentop – what do you make of that?
Seems to me like my trusty Plank went to the same accountancy day-release course as the subject company’s Bean Counter! ;o)
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It has risen to 7 now (so far) 70%, anything over 60% is a profit, lol.
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Well, Woodentop – it’s a knocking bet that my trusty Plank will get sick of ‘Disliking’ WAAAY before I get sick of posting comments for him/her/them to amuse themselves by bashing away like a demented Duracell Bunny…
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Bliddy autocorrect – I’m certain I didn’t type “aMuse” in the above post…
;o)
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Shocked to see comments saying the business should have known. The very nature of conmen/women is they are devious and cover their tracks.
A company that employs circa 180 staff 40k per annum to steal would probably be easy to cover up.
I am glad they found out and hope their business has not suffered too much.
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SP you are correct, the very nature of a con is to hide the activity but correct accounting would have prevented this from happening in the beginning. Far to often I have seen accounts presented but not checked to see if they are correct/missing numbers. An accountant wouldn’t know if there was anything missing as in the main they only add/subtract what is put in front of them, an auditor digs to make sure the figures are correct and my years of experience regrettably has shown that the latter is ad hoc with many business’s. I doubt this is the last case we will hear about.
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Think it maybe over simplifying it Woodentop.
By the sounds it was a sophisticated fraud, To defraud the company of 40k a year the properties / monies were probably never even added to the lettings book and or accounts.
I do not know the company but to employ 180 staff i would assume they had pretty decent accountants.
In effect she was probably running a letting company within the letting agents. Given her trusted position as a manager, probably not reporting to anybody directly it would be easy to defraud the company.
But i do agree this is probably and sadly no the last story like this we will hear of.
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“Given her trusted position as a manager, probably not reporting to anybody directly it would be easy to defraud the company.”
Got it in one . No auditing!
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Think you are being very hard on the company.
Considering they seem to know to the penny how much was taken, i believe the fraudster in question set up an account to a similar name of the business she was at and just got standing orders set up to the account.
No paper trail to say that a fraud was taking place.
No company would expect this to happen to them and hard if not impossible to prevent.
You do need to trust your staff not micromanage them.
I once found out a member of my staff had valued a property and sold it to a friend of his and charged the seller a reduced fee cutting me out the process. I only found out fortuitously as a solicitor smelt something funny and called me.
If it was not for the solicitor i would never have known. Am i suppose to call all my negs valuations to follow up on them?
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Beg to differ and it is not my intention to ridicule them or you. Simple fact that a large organisation must have auditing procedures in place as they are ripe for the picking by staff who can hide their activities. I have helped many agents who were having assets syphoned off from right under their noses. Even caught one lot walking out with the filing cabinet (pre computer days). As I said not the last company and certainly not the first. It never ceases to amaze me how such a simple procedure is ignored 4 + 4 = 6, err where has the 2 gone! When I ask the directors of a firm the common reply is, the accountant will pick it up. No they won’t as they are presented with 4 + 2 = 6 and is all they see. I don’t wish to labour it further but if every agent read this story, there would be some very worried faces.
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I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this 😉
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Agreed. Have a nice day.
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I think auditors of agents should send a rent statement (by post) to all tenants each year asking the tenant to contact the auditor if they disagree with the statement. Likewise with a statement of all payments that have been made to landlords.
Only by “closing the loop” can this type of thing be stopped.
However even then an employee can leave the country before the auditor finds out.
Either there was a lot of unpaid (or late) rent recorded on the system, or tenant were paying more rent then the agent system was expecting. Both cases should have been found if a different member of staff (form the person that process rent payments) was responsible for sorting out issues with late rents payments and sending statement to tenants (could be automated SMS message thanking the tenant for the rent payment.)
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Have to say the accounts clearly were not audited, just produced?
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