Greedy workers swindled £107k from kitchen firm
TWO members of staff who cheated their firm out of almost £107,000 have been jailed. Christopher Minott, 44, let friend Michelle Blackman move her ill-gotten gains into his bank accounts after she stole massive amounts of money from her bosses.
The pair got away with it for years and were only caught when staff at Kingswinford-based kitchen tap company Triflow Concepts decided to carry out checks during the pandemic. Minott was working in IT sales and earning a huge six-figure salary at the time.
Mother-of-three Blackman, 48, of Wood Leasow, Bartley Green, was jailed for three years after admitting fraud by abuse of position between May 25, 2016, and May 20, 2020.
Minott, of Bideford, Devon, admitted two counts of possession of criminal property, and a further count of concealing, disguising, converting or transferring criminal property. He was jailed for two years and eight
months. Wolverhampton Crown Court Judge Rhona Campbell said Blackman spent the money on clothes, jewellery and car payments.
She added: “These are greedy, unpleasant offences – taking money that was not yours, that you had not earned, in order to enhance your own circumstances when you had no deserving right to it at all.
“We are not talking about a situation
where either of you are in dire financial straits.
“It’s not a one-off – it’s planned on 26 deliberate and separate occasions.”
Rebecca Da Silva, prosecuting, said Blackman took the cash in ‘chunks’, tricking management into thinking she was merely transferring owed cash to creditors. The fraudulent activity began when Blackman was appointed as accounts administrator at the firm in 2016.
She was a trusted member of staff, responsible for payments to creditors and could amend details on invoices before passing them on to the general manager. Bosses decided to assess the business as the Coronavirus pandemic hit and a review of its costs was undertaken in March 2020.
It led to a probe which revealed a number of payments totalling almost £107,500 had been made to two bank accounts. Blackman had been moving the money, with Minott ‘facilitating’ it by allowing the cash to pass through his accounts in 26 separate transactions.
In a victim impact statement, general manager Michael Southall said the incident caused him ‘a lot of stress and additional work’.
Benjamin Williams, defending Blackman, said she had ‘vague aspirations’ to give it all back but alleged debt problems worsened and she went back to pinching the cash.
Harpreet Sandhu KC, defending dad-of-three Minottt, said he had expressed remorse.