A former employee of letting agency Allan & Bath has been jailed for stealing almost £400,000 from the Bournemouth company.
Sixty one year old Shirley Player, who had pleaded guilty to stealing £390,550 from company funds between February 2007 and March 2014, was sentenced to four years in prison, of which she will serve two, with the balance on licence.
Matt Derry, regional director of Allan & Bath, says: "No clients of the firm or other third parties have been affected. This was entirely a loss to the company."
He says the firm has detailed and robust security procedures in place throughout the group.
However, this employee was described as a long-serving and trusted member of the team, working for the firm for 14 years.
Unfortunately, for historic reasons this office did not yet conform to our group-wide standards, and it was whilst we were embodying those systems that we uncovered these irregularities. There would be no scope for such a circumstance arising again in the future" insists Derry.
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Comments
Just looking at the figures this is an amazing way to 'acquire' money. Four years jail gets you 400,000 pounds. At that rate who cares about the the two years of minor discomfort that has to be endured
Seriously, I used to hear of exactly this attitude to employment in the far east. A company that I worked through was put out of business through this tactic. A manager always has to assume the worst is happening and then be delighted if it doesn't.
If they didn't miss nearly 400,000 what does that say for their landlord clients
Mind you I went to a seminar in Bournemouth where one of the A & B Management staff told me they didn't have in place any Terms of Business with any of their contractors. So an agent that was fined 70,000 last year (when a tradesman fell through a roof and was killed) because of a lack of any ToB insisting on H & S compliance by the contractor doesn't ring alarm bells either eh It's not just A & B but most agents.