Business
| TOP STORIES |  | | | | | | FEATURES | | | | | | MAYOR NEWS | | | | TRAVEL | | | | COMPETITIONS | | |
|
|
|
Woman ordered to repay £300,000
An accounts manager who stole thousands of pounds from an Epsom company has been told she must repay more than a quarter of a million pounds to another company she has stolen from.
Sharon Bridgewater worked at Dyna-Five, a computer hardware company in 1996 where she stole £25,000 and disguised it as payments to suppliers and tax.
The huge theft eventually led to the downfall of the company and forced it into liquidation.
She pleaded guilty to eight false accounting offences and was sentented to 150 hours community service.
But within months Bridgewater had been employed as financial director of another company in 1999, hiding her criminal past.
Over a period of six years she stole more than £2million from the company and funded a lavish lifestyle which included a string of properties, expensive meals and sports cars.
She was jailed last October for five years, but yesterday a judge ordered that she pay back all of the remaining £324,000 she gained from the audacious fraud or serve a further three-and-a-half years in prison.
Detective Sergeant Dom Lucas who led the investigation said he was pleased with the result. He added: "Sharon Bridgewater's actions led to the collapse of a company and the near collapse of two more companies. She was selfishly prepared to have innocent family members and friends arrested where people had unwittingly acted upon her instructions and innocently assisted in the disposal of these criminal gains.
"Today's confiscation has further proved that not only have assets been taken from her, she also has to pay back £324,000 which will be fed back into charitable organizations and more policing. If this money is not paid she will serve a further three-and-a-half years imprisonment, clearly proving that crime doesn't pay."
She was only exposed when her boss checked the company bank accounts and found just a few pounds remaining.
3:32pm Thursday 24th April 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
