Authbridge

A woman who plundered tens of thousands of pounds from a college after lying to get a job there has been jailed for two years.

Juliette Harding was found out only when she got a new position in Corsham and started stealing in the same way from her latest employers.

The 45-year-old had used her position as a payroll supervisor to siphon money into her account by pretending to pay casual staff or former employees.

During the period of her fraud the mother of two went on holiday to Sri Lanka and New York, arranged a trip to Portugal and paid off a £10,000 loan for a sports car.

She even wrote phrases such as “our hols” next to names on the Corsham firm’s payroll.

She also took out more than £18,000 in cash during eight months, despite all her bills being paid by direct debit, and spent hundreds on facials and manicures.

Colin Meeke, prosecuting, said she that when she had applied for a job at Swindon College in November 2007 she failed to mention a conviction for benefit fraud from 1998, which would have ruled her out for the post.

He told the town’s crown court that she started working there and almost immediately began to divert money into her own account.

Using the names and details for casual staff she put through payments to them, but used her own bank details instead of theirs.

During her time at the college, where she was in charge of the payroll, she diverted £22,818 she was not entitled to into her own account.

Almost a year after she started, when a full Criminal Records Bureau report revealed her past, she resigned and received £7,000 in lieu of notice as a pay-off from the college.

Mr Meeke said at that stage her latest crimes had not been uncovered and she started work at engineering materials firm the Barnes Group on the Leafield Trading Estate in Corsham.

Over the following couple of months she ran a similar scam where she reinstated two former employees on to the payroll with her bank details.

While she was there she got away with £3,980 and was about to get her hands on a further £4,051 when she was stopped in January last year.

Mr Meeke said: “It is noted in documents recovered from her desk drawer show the amounts stolen next to the names on the pay roll thus: next to one she had written ‘our hols’ and ‘ski’ by the other. It does tend to suggest where the money was going.”

Mr Meeke said she was ‘quite canny’ while at Barnes, ensuring she got her hands on payslips first so she could remove the ones relating to her fraud.

During the period of her crime, he said, she was living with her husband and they had joint incomes of between £3,500 and £4,000 a month.

Harding, of Cornbrash Rise, Hilperton, Trowbridge, pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud.

The court heard she had also been convicted of benefit fraud in May 2009.

Charles Rowe, defending, said his client was very sorry for what she had done but said the money had been spent on giving her children a better life.

He insisted the holidays to Sri Lanka and New York had been paid for by her 23-year-old daughter who received a payment following a car accident.

The Portugal trip had not been taken as she could not afford it and only the deposit paid and he said the Mazda MX5 was an old car and bought for just £2,000, the rest of the loan she had taken out to buy it being used for other debts.

Mr Rowe said she had a history of failed relationships and money troubles caused by the breakdown of a previous marriage where she was left with a lot of debts.