A payroll and accounts clerk has been jailed for 12 months for defrauding her recruitment agency employer out of more than £31k.

Lucy Taylor stole £31,572 from commercial, IT and office recruiter Oakland House Recruitment, which has branches in Cheshire and Staffordshire, by creating false invoices and transferring the money to her husband’s account. 

Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard that she began helping herself to the company’s funds after she and her husband ran into financial difficulties. Taylor, of Barleyfields in Audley, Stoke-on-Trent, pleaded guilty to the fraud that took place between October 2013 and July 2014.

The court heard that as a result of the fraud, staff weren’t paid bonuses and commission, and customers and suppliers were also inconvenienced.

Jailing Taylor, recorder Martin Wasik said: “This is a serious offence. It is a fraud committed in breach of trust by a person employed by a family company to manage their finances in circumstances where that person is given a lot of responsibility and there is really no-one else checking up on what they were doing.”

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