Ipswich Crown Court
Sara Turner over-ordered printer cartridges for two years at Glemsford Parish Council in the UK, and was given a 22 month jail sentence suspended for two years.
The over-ordered stationery items, which were mainly printer cartridges, came to the value of £16,000 ($24,100/€22,800), with Turner selling them on Amazon for personal profit, East Anglian Daily Times reported.
Ipswich Crown Court also issued her with a 10 week electronically monitored curfew between 9pm and 6am, along with 200 hours unpaid community work, after she admitted one count of fraud, between 2009 and September 2011. She pleaded guilty in October.
Judge David Goodin said Turner had lied throughout her police interview and in her defence statement, and that the parish council had been a “sitting duck” in relation to her “relentless dishonesty”.
She had been employed part time as a clerk and was authorised to make purchases for up to £500 ($755/€712). By ordering in bulk she had received expensive bonus gifts which were never given to the council, while its poor expenditure recording allowed the fraudulent purchases to continue.
Prosecutor Charles Myatt said some of the cartridges didn’t even fit the council’s printers. The fraud was uncovered when large quantities of printer cartridges were found at Turner’s home in Braintree, Essex.
The chairman of the council, Michael Brown, who joined the council just as the allegations against Turner were coming out, said: “We are far more transparent now. I wouldn’t say it is impossible, but it’s now nearly impossible for something like this to happen again.
“Every councillor sees the books about a week before every meeting. The person who has the chequebook can’t sign the cheques and the person who signs the cheques doesn’t have the book.
“The accounts are presented to the council, and anyone who walks up to the office and asks to see our financial records will get them.”