Accountant stole £252k from boss with dying wife
MAN DEFRAUDED CAR DEALER OVER SIX YEARS
A Cold-hearted and devious accountant who stole £252,000 while his boss cared for his terminally-ill wife has been jailed.
Christopher Sopp defrauded Town Centre Automobiles, a Citroen dealership in Sunderland, over a period of six years in a sophisticated operation which brought the company to the brink of collapse.
Sopp was paid more than £70,000 a year, received cars for himself and his family, Sunderland AFC season tickets and exotic paid-for holidays, but it wasn’t enough for him.
In 2017, his boss and close friend Stephen Smith confided in his trusted accountant that the NHS could do no more for his wife’s cancer and that he needed to find £890,000 for treatment overseas – but Sopp’s stealing continued.
Sentencing the 53-year-old of Thornhill Park, Sunderland, to three years’ imprisonment, Judge Gittins said Sopp “was a man who had it all but wanted more”.
Prosecutor Paul Cross detailed how Sopp’s offending began in 2012, first by diverting more than £5,600 in company funds to pay off the finance on his own car.
Over the next six years, he wrote cheques for tens of thousands of pounds out to himself, covering his tracks by tampering with company books to make it look like the money was accounted for.
In a heartbreaking victim impact statement, Mr Smith said: “He was a valued and trusted colleague and soon became a close friend, we went out together with our families.
“He became more like family than an employee, I loved him like a brother and trusted him totally, so much so that I included him in my will in 2010.”
In 2015, Mr Smith took a step back from the business in order to spend more time caring for his dying wife.
Following the departure of his brother from the company, Mr Smith encouraged Sopp to buy company shares and entrusted the day-to-day running of the firm to him.
But Sopp’s plot began to unravel when it came to light he was having an affair, rocking the unflinching trust and confidence colleagues once had him.
Mr Smith said: “He knew this was a very difficult time for me and I thought my company was in the safe hands of someone who loved it as much as I did and wouldn’t betray me or the staff.
“While I was trying to raise money to save my wife’s life, he was stealing money from the company.
“We found out he was having an affair – he said he was at company meetings but he was deceiving us and his wife and children.”
When it emerged the company had become dangerously overdrawn on Sopp’s watch, he was suspended and Mr Smith was forced to divert his attention away from his wife in order to battle to save the firm.
He called Sopp the “worst type of criminal” who acted purely out of selfishness, describing him as a “coldhearted, calculated narcissist, a liar and a thief”.
Another company director, Christopher Marshall, said Sopp had “paralysed the company with problems he created so would not be discovered”.
He added: “He was not motivated by genuine financial need, addiction or a personal crisis – it was just pure greed.”
Defending, Daniel Cordey said Sopp had suffered from depression and endured a difficult start to life after being adopted but losing both parents by his early 20s, adding that he has now “lost everything”.
Judge Gittins sentenced Sopp to three years’ imprisonment on four counts of theft and false accounting and also confirmed a Proceedings of Crime Act hearing will take place in the future in an attempt to recover the stolen funds.