Ex-director who defrauded firm of £37k gets suspended sentence
A DISGRACED former director who defrauded a community-based company of over £37,000 was handed a suspended jail sentence yesterday.
Strive NI was established in December 2013 to promote sport and physical activity to excluded groups.
However, the company was dissolved in May 2017 after Michael Mccusker defrauded it. wouldn’t come out right, so I just filmed them chatting innocently and candidly and it was hilarious.
“They are such funny little boys and they have captured the hearts of people from as far away as America and Australia.
“I just wanted to show how the kids have been entertaining themselves during these times out on the farm and put a bit of a positive spin on lockdown.”
The father-of-two from Brunels View in Dundrum was handed a 15-month sentence, suspended for three years, by Judge Stephen Fowler QC. He was also banned from operating as a company director for the next five years.
The 43-year-old appeared at a remote hearing of Belfast Crown Court, where it emerged that McCusker ran Strive as a one-man operation.
The company’s bank account was opened in March 2014 and closed the following August. During this period, Strive obtained a grant from the Big Lottery Fund and made use of a £20,000 overdraft.
Judge Fowler said Mccusker “operated Strive for his own ends” and there was “no evidence” that any funds were used for the proposed social purpose.
On September 2, 2014 McCusker, acting on behalf of Strive, applied for £10,000 overdraft facility, and within days he had withdrawn £9,980 in cash.
He repeated this three months later.
Mccusker received nearly £10,000 of lottery funding for working with disadvantaged youths in north Belfast — but no activities took place.
Other loans were transferred into Mccusker’s bank account, and he committed cheque fraud using forged signatures.
When some of the non-executive directors discovered the overdraft run up by Mccusker, an emergency meeting was scheduled and Mccusker was suspended. He was dismissed at a second meeting, and while Strive was dissolved in May 2017, Mccusker was arrested following a police investigation.
In total, Mccusker pleaded to four counts of fraud by false representation, and three of using a false instrument with intent.
Because of Mccusker, the Bank of Ireland sustained a loss of £24,358.63, the Big Lottery lost £9,640 and Youth Charter lost £4,000.
These frauds, Judge Fowler said, were “tainted by breach of trust placed in the defendant as a company director.”
Judge Fowler noted that McCusker had no criminal record, had not offended since, and had experienced a “monumental fall from grace”.
He said the former company director is now living on benefits with very little prospect of finding employment and “his previous good name and reputation has been destroyed”.