Ex-law student is jailed over £50k noodle bar scam
A DISGRACED takeaway manager was jailed for a year yesterday after she admitted embezzling nearly £50,000 from a noodle bar.
Former law student Jade Gibson sometimes stole several thousand pounds in a day as she took money from the eatery to fund a lavish lifestyle.
The 29-year-old set up an elaborate system of refunds to keep cash for herself and systematically stole from a branch of chain Dr Noodles for nearly two years.
Dundee Sheriff Court was told Gibson cooked dishes herself so her staff were not aware of how much money she was passing through the till.
Sheriff Craig Harris told her: ‘This was a sustained fraud over 21 months in which you embezzled £47,000. You saw the opportunity to manipulate card transactions at the till. It was both a systematic and structured scheme, designed to profit you and avoid detection.
‘You prepared orders yourself to avoid alerting colleagues. This was a gross breach of trust. You had been given managerial responsibilities and considerable trust was placed in you by your employers.
‘Your employers have lost £47,000 and they have no prospect of getting that back. You took it and used it for your own purposes – to live well beyond your legitimate means.’
Gibson, of Kirkcaldy, in Fife, admitted embezzling £47,000 from Dr Noodles in the city’s Nethergate between May 3, 2016 and February 14, 2018, while employed as a manager.
She was originally charged with embezzling £62,363.85, but the Crown accepted her guilty plea to the reduced figure.
Fiscal depute Gavin Burton told the court Gibson had been a university student and had started working in the city centre noodle bar in 2011.
He added: ‘The owners became concerned about the revenue being lower than expected. In early 2018 they became aware of a significant amount of cancelled orders on
Career now left in ruins
the till. They only occurred on the days the accused was working,’ Mr Burton said.
‘The decision was made to renew the CCTV system, installing a camera above the till. Following a weekend when she had worked, they reviewed the CCTV and discovered the accused had been embezzling money from the business.’
Solicitor Jim Laverty, defending, said: ‘She utterly regrets her actions. She expressed remorse particularly in relation to the breach of trust. She had been a valued employee.’
Gibson had been a law student and was more recently working with a Fife-based legal firm. But any career in that field now looks in ruins.
Sheriff Harris said he had no option but to send her to jail due to the scale of the embezzlement and the gross breach of trust it involved.