An agent who stole over £21,000 worth of money including tenants’ deposits confessed to what she had done in a short email to her boss, and then walked out of the office, leaving the bank paperwork on her desk.
Tracey Skeels, 59, was a property manager for Bairstow Eves, in Billericay, Essex.
Her email read: “Dear Sue, I don’t know where to start really. All I can say is I have been taking money from the company for the last two years. I am so ashamed but I am glad it’s all out in the open.”
The amount she had taken was £21,394.
Basildown Crown Court heard that she had started stealing after building up payday loans debts.
Laureen Hussain said in mitigation: “Her debt was £10,000 and she was simply trying to pay it back but it never happened. It isn’t an excuse, it’s an explanation.”
Skeels admitted her thefts in two disciplinary hearings and confessed to police. She admitted to a charge of theft at Southend Magistrates court last month.
The “unsophisticated” fraud was carried out using funds from tenants’ deposits or admin fees.
Skeels was sentenced to eight months in prison suspended for 18 months and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work, says a report in the local paper
If this was an “unsophisticated” fraud why wasn’t it picked up by internal or external auditing??? Apparently according to the newspaper she was filtering money from the client account from deposits that hadn’t been paid back and over paid rents from tenants that had vacated, the reason it was missed is because the paper alleges that Bairstow Eves filter this money to other accounts???? I would have thought this warrants a bit of deeper investigation as to what BE are doing with unclaimed money???
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