Boss stole £2m from own firm to fund betting habit
A FINANCE boss who stole more than £2million from her employer to fund a gambling addiction has been jailed for almost six years.
Joyce Baker, 61, outwardly played the role of dedicated senior employee at a lighting firm who befriended staff by bringing in home-made cakes.
But she left the Light Corporation – which has supplied lighting for the yacht of billionaire Roman Abramovich – on its knees by pilfering money for six years.
She even had a role in deciding who lost their jobs to keep the business afloat as she pocketed cash.
Baker squandered huge sums with online betting firms, including Rank, Jackpotjoy and Sky Bet. The mother of two is also suspected of having hidden some of the money to take advantage of when she is released from prison.
Sentencing her to five years and ten months, Judge Stephen Warner said: ‘This was a systematic and planned dishonesty on a vast scale, committed over many years in breach of a high degree of trust.
‘I accept it was to feed the scourge of a gambling addiction. It explains your conduct but cannot justify it.’
David Caddick, who owns the lighting firm based in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, said after the hearing: ‘She was manipulative, Machiavellian and malicious. She hoodwinked us all from the start.’
Baker joined the company, which makes light fittings for bars, restaurants, homes and hotels, in 2012.
The £45,000-a-year manager had come recommended as someone who could help expand the business.
But she led a double life after becoming obsessed with bingo, before moving on to slot machines and then online gambling, St Albans Crown Court heard.
Within six weeks of starting her new job she had paid £5,000 into her own account to help feed her habit.
She used her position to authorise batches of payments to genuine suppliers, hiding credits to her own account among them.
Baker’s knowledge of the company’s payments system enabled her to cover her tracks by falsifying and erasing records. Despite a turnover of up to £8million a year, the business was cash poor and nearly half of its 70 staff had to be laid off.
Mr Caddick, 59, said: ‘Some of these people she selected herself
‘She has shown no remorse’
when she was still stealing significant sums of money from us.
‘These are people who, in some cases, thought she was a friend.’
Baker’s fraud started to unravel when shareholder Louise Baldock was brought in to assess the financial situation towards the end of 2017.
After Baker left in 2018, police were contacted when it became clear £2,011,983 had been stolen.
Baker, of Hemel Hempstead, was sentenced on Monday after admitting fraud. She also pleaded guilty to contempt of court for failing to reveal assets she had hidden. Prosecutor Walton Hornsby said Baker often lost up to £4,000 a night gambling.
It emerged that she used a pedaloperated device in her home to set off a virtual spinning roulette wheel or slot machine on a TV screen. She would often be ‘sat in front of the TV with her foot on the pedal as she ate her breakfast’, the court was told.
When asked by gambling firms to prove her income, Baker forged Mr Caddick’s signature to claim she earned £750 a day as a consultant.
The firms involved paid £613,582 to keep the firm afloat when the fraud was revealed, Mr Hornsby said.
Nathalie Carter, defending, said her client had told her she would ‘for ever be remorseful that the people I took from were family and friends’.
But Mr Caddick added afterwards: ‘She has shown no remorse for what she did and she hasn’t contacted me or offered to return any of the money she stole.’
A spokesman for Rank, which owns Grosvenor Casinos, said Grosvenor ‘voluntarily divested its full benefit to the Light Corporation’.
A Sky Bet spokesman said: ‘Despite having no legal obligation to do so, we made a voluntary divestment of funds to The Light Corporation.’