Two years’ jail for Red Cross charity cheat
‘Trusted’ employee embezzled £350k
A fINANCE worker who embezzled more than £350,000 from the British Red Cross was jailed for two years yesterday.
Mary Booth was ‘a trusted and valued’ employee at the charity for 34 years and worked at its London headquarters before its payroll department moved to Scotland.
But the 56-year-old, who earned £45,000 a year and retired with a full pension and lump sum, siphoned off almost £360,000 from the charity, which she paid in to her own bank accounts.
She claimed she scammed the charity, which helps the needy across the world, so she could fund her online gambling habit after splitting from her husband.
The former payroll manager was jailed for 27 months at Paisley Sheriff Court yesterday.
Booth embezzled the money between November 2008 and August 2015 at the charity’s Paisley office and its London premises. She pleaded guilty last month. Booth had access to the charity’s bank accounts, allowing her to send money to herself.
She siphoned off the money by making numerous payments to five people – one of whom did not exist.
In february 2016, after Booth had retired, Deborah McBean, the charity’s head of control and compliance, noticed irregularities in payments from 2015.
An investigation was launched and the charity froze the accounts the money had been paid in to – prompting Booth to contact them, asking them to lift the freeze and saying she would ‘make an agreement regarding missing money’.
But the charity reported it to police. Booth was later interviewed at her home in Croydon, south London, and admitted her guilt.
Procurator fiscal Depute Scot Dignan said: ‘Booth embezzled sums from the charity’s accounts and salary payments.’
Defence solicitor Jonathan Manson said ‘the most important thing in this case is to find a way the British Red Cross can be reimbursed’, and added that Booth may have to sell her £350,000 home to pay back the cash.
Her lawyer added: ‘It was a hamfisted plot. She was the subject of a fairly acrimonious divorce, had been gambling for a period of time before that and was able to afford it.
‘Two incomes became one, she continued with the gambling and tried it [embezzling money] once and got away with it and it then simply got out of hand.’
Sentencing her, Sheriff Seith Ireland said: ‘There is no alternative to custody, given the gravity of the offence.’
Booth, who took a holdall with her in anticipation of being jailed, sat with her head bowed in the dock as she was sentenced and waved to her son as she was taken away.
Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said: ‘We were devastated to discover that a longserving employee in a position of trust had defrauded us.
‘We have put robust measures in place to prevent this from ever happening again.
‘We are doing everything we can to recover the lost funds.’