Perth charity worker could face jail term
Care service boss embezzled thousands of pounds
A care services manager with a leading Perth-based charity has been warned he could face a jail sentence after being convicted of embezzling thousands of pounds from them over a two-and-a-halfyear period.
Forty-four-year-old Stewart McFarlane, of Stormont Road, Scone, also submitted false expenses while working for the Perth and Kinross Association of Voluntary Services - and used the charity’s fuel card for his own personal benefit.
His trial, which concluded at Perth Sheriff Court on Friday, was told that less than a fortnight after he was suspended over alleged financial irregularities, he submitted a resignation letter.
Part of the internal investigations centred on charity poker events held by PKAVS, which is based at The Gateway, North Methven Street.
They could expect to generate between £1,000 and £2,000 each.
On one occasion, he was given the proceeds from one of the poker fundraisers and he rolled up the cash and put it in his pocket.
He was then said to have gone to a local nightclub with friends.
One of the organisers said she was unhappy with the way the money had been handed over to McFarlane.
She had hoped it would have been presented to PKAVS in the form of a “big cheque”.
McFarlane had denied that between November 27, 2011, and June 1, 2014, at The Glen Bar, Edinburgh Road, Perth, and elsewhere, he embezzled £5,795.22.
Sheriff Gillian Wade found him guilty of pocketing the slightly lesser sum of £5,128.
He had already pled guilty at an earlier hearing to submitting false and unauthorised expenses at PKAVS between April 30, 2012, and October 21, 2014, and fraudulently using the business fuel card.
He will discover his fate on May 3 after a background report has been prepared. Perth Sheriff Court
McFarlane told the court that he had taken the cash to the nightclub that evening as he had “nowhere else to put it.”
On other occasions, the charity’s finance assistant wouldn’t be in the office and he would leave money in her pigeon hole, behind a security door.
He didn’t want the “responsibility” of it being in his office.
If the employee was there, he would tell her where the proceeds had come from and where it had to go.
He stressed that he had no responsibility for the money once he had handed it in.
Sheriff Wade said she wanted the benefit of a social work report before passing sentence.