Fraudster finance boss took £475k from three firms
A FINANCE boss who swindled around £475,000 from three companies to pay for holidays, clothes and private school fees fled to South Africa when his crimes were discovered.
David Lawson, 45, admitted defrauding firms including an offshoot of property firm Allied London, which is behind high-profile Manchester projects in Spinningfields and London Road Fire Station.
Lawson was financial director at Capital Properties Ltd, a property management firm which is part of Allied, from February 2012 until he lost his job as part of a cost-cutting measure in 2015, Manchester Crown Court heard.
It was when Lawson’s £19,200 redundancy package was being agreed that irregularities were found on the company credit card.
Prosecuting, Charlotte Crangle said Lawson had been using the card for personal expenditure and had racked up £10,211.
Further investigations uncovered that Lawson, whose salary was about £90,000, had benefited from another £301,477 in 24 separate payments over a two-and-a-half year period.
He had adapted legitimate invoices from suppliers, changing the payment details to his own bank account and making it seem as if the firm needed to make further payments to suppliers.
Lawson, a trained accountant and law graduate, later claimed it was a ‘simple’ offence to commit because the company was working on projects worth millions of pounds and his illicit dealings were not spotted. The loss was covered by insurers, but the court heard that Lawson’s offending was partly behind a decision to make redundancies at the firm.
Lawson left the company and in July last year took on a £75,000-a-year job as financial controller at family-run Sports Shoes Ltd, based in West Yorkshire.
Despite being ‘handsomely remunerated,’ Lawson fraudulently took £34,562 from the company during the three months he worked for the firm. He created a fake employee and paid himself their wages, transferred money from the company PayPal account and misused the company credit card.
Lawson had been arrested in September last year in relation to his fraud at Capital Properties and committed some of the offending at Sports Shoes Ltd while on bail.
After leaving the company Lawson then fled to South Africa in November last year in what his barrister described as a moment of ‘panic.’
He was arrested on March 15 this year at Manchester Airport when he returned.
Further examination of Lawson’s bank account found he had also committed fraud while working as financial controller at Harrogate-based Commercial Estates Group.
Between October 2010 and January 2012 he had fraudulently taken £128,750 from the company in 21 different payments to his account.
Defending, John Williams said Lawson got into financial difficulty in 2007 when he had to move to London for work, continuing to finance his wife and three children’s lifestyle while he lived in London for work.
He ran up large debts, paying for private school fees, holidays, clothes and paying off credit card debts.
Lawson, who is about £200,000 in debt and is going through divorce proceedings, said continuing to take out loans in his name and his wife’s name without her knowledge was ‘financial suicide.’
Lawson, of Stray Garth, Otley Road, Harrogate, was sentenced to five years and four months in prison after earlier pleading guilty to three counts of fraud.
He will also be subject to a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing which was scheduled for December.