Office boss stole £200k ... and used cash to meet Ant and Dec
AN OFFICE manager plundered £200,000 from a small firm to fund an extravagant lifestyle that even included partying with Ant and Dec.
Amanda Toward, a 45yearold mother of one, became a ‘hapless drunk’ following her divorce, a court heard.
She went on a fouryear spree at the expense of her ‘ goodnatured’ boss, taking his business to the brink of collapse.
She was pictured with Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly in 2016 at the height of her fraud campaign. She told a friend she met the TV presenters following a charity auction, adding: ‘ Not cheap, I tell you, but well worth it.’
Toward has now been jailed for three years and four months, after pleading guilty to fraud.
Newcastle Crown Court heard she had been among five founding members of staff at Big Purple Productions, an events planning firm set up in 2013, where she looked after its finances and had access to its bank account. Toward, who drank six bottles of wine a day, took advantage to embezzle thousands.
The court heard the money went on ‘ alcohol and other extravagances’. Judge Edward Bindloss said: ‘I’ve read you drove a Range Rover, you had expensive holidays such as in Mexico, you had an expensive
‘It became an addiction’
residence.’ Toward’s fraud began to unravel during her trip to Mexico last August, when her boss Eddie McKay noticed duplicate payments on his firm’s bank statements.
Prosecutor Michael Bunch said: ‘A check was carried out by the bank which indicated this system had been going on for a number of years. Because of Toward’s control of the accountPRINTED ing system, she recorded the payments as legitimate recipients, companies with whom the business was actually trading.’
Mr Bunch detailed how Mr McKay had helped Toward when she experienced problems at home with her son, giving her significant time off work. He said: ‘ He gave her support over and above what would normally be expected from an employer supporting an employee.’
After her Mexico trip, Toward returned to the office in Gateshead, where she was sacked.
In total she had fraudulently obtained £204,216 – a sum which the prosecutor said ‘threatened the existence of the company’.
When arrested, she told police: ‘I got myself into financial difficulties and family stress. It became something of an addiction.’ Sentencing her, Judge Bindloss said Toward’s life had ‘spiralled out of control’ following her divorce but told her: ‘It was at another person’s expense that you sought to find your way out of trouble.
‘Your position is aggravated by the fact Mr McKay seems to have been a generous employer who looked after your interests. His goodnatured approach to you was something you utterly betrayed because all the time you were stealing from him and the company behind his back.’
Jamie Adams, defending, said: ‘This was not just wickedness, in fact it was probably anything but wickedness. She was a hapless drunk. It was always going to come back to her, and it did.
‘She only wishes she had the means to restore all of what she took from Mr McKay. She knows he was good to her.’