CHARITY SWINDLER AVOIDS JAIL WOMAN WHO RAN NI STROKE GROUP TOOK £4,000
A CO Armagh woman who swindled more than £4,000 from a charity has avoided going to jail.
Instead of being taken to the cells, Valerie Dale (43) walked free from Craigavon Magistrates Court with 100 hours community service and 18 months on probation.
Deputy District Judge Chris Holmes told the weeping fraudster the fact she abused her position within the charity Young Women After Stroke to take money was “the height of a breach of trust”.
“The papers are riven with acts of dishonesty and there is no doubt you were involved in multiple acts of active dishonesty,” the judge told Dale.
He added that the only thing saving her from an immediate prison sentence was the fact that full restitution was being made, but even so, “you will leave the court with a significant stain on your character”.
At an earlier hearing Dale, from Cottage Hill in Lurgan, pleaded guilty to two counts of theft relating to £1,500 and £2,540 taken from the charity between April 1, 2016, and February 28, 2017.
She also pleaded guilty to two counts of committing fraud by abusing the position of trust she held with Young Women After Stroke in that “while occupying a position where you were expected to safeguard or not to act against the financial interests” of the charity, she used the charity bank card to make payments, withdrawals and failed to lodge cash.
She also confessed to false accounting in that she “destroyed, defaced, concealed or falsified a certain account record or document, namely written accounts and voluntary groups’ monthly accounts forms, which had been made or required for an account- ing purpose” for her personal gain.
A prosecuting lawyer yesterday outlined how Dale was a coordinator for the charity and as such had been “placed in charge of finances with full access to the debit card and the group’s bank account”.
She added, however, that the Stroke Association, which co-ordinated the group, “noticed some concerning transactions”.
The group director raised numerous issues with Dale including “her account keeping and lack of receipts to prove transactions that were for the benefit of the group.”
At a second meeting two weeks later Dale “produced a file with handwritten notes, a receipt book and a bank lodgement book”.
However, when handing over an envelope containing £1,500 in cash, she candidly told the director she had been fraudulently using the charity’s bank cards.
Dale resigned from her post, said the lawyer, revealing that when a member of the Stroke Association got home one evening, she found a letter from the fraudster outlining how she had taken a further £2,540.
She claimed she had given it to a relative who was having mortgage problems but that she intended to pay it back.
Defence barrister Aaron Thompson said the case against Dale, who sat weeping in the dock, her head constantly bowed, was “extremely grave”, and in terms of cases heard in the lower courts, “probably at the upper end of the register”.
Conceding that defrauding a charity “is the height of a breach of trust”, the lawyer said Dale was “fairly shame-faced” about her actions.
He submitted that despite the serious nature of the frauds, the judge’s hands “are not tied by this behaviour”.
“There’s been a great deal of loss for her in this case and I ask you not to compound that loss further by imprisonment,” said the lawyer.
As well as the community services and 18 months on probation, the judge imposed a compensation order allowing Dale four weeks to pay back the money.