I was fired for Gross Misconduct today.

[HoldingOnatoday]

Just need to talk to someone outside of my family really. It’s been a tough time recently, lost my mum and then I got Pneumonia and ended up in intensive care for six weeks.

I returned to work on Friday and had an investigation meeting where I was accused of submitting fraudulent expense mileage claims. I disputed some which were left on an agree to disagrees. Some id accidentally left in, where I’d been to visit clients homes, the clients had cancelled and I’d forgot to remove the mileage. Its auto done for us but alas I should’ve manually removed them. I accept responsibility and this is on me.

I’ve put in £10,000 (I do a lot of driving/stay in hotels) worth of expenses in the last year and £900 was found to be fraud. These were the cancelled ones I’d not deleted. They’re going to contact the police and I’m not sure if anything will come to it. It was done more job negligence (I’ve not been up to par) than maliciously. I’ve been scattered brained, driving 7 hours a day for work often and running on empty.

The thing is I’m good at my job, I’m a good person I’d like to think. But I’m so broken by this, I’ve finally got a good credit rating, which will now be damaged by mortgage repayments and bills being missed. I’m also scared at the prospect of going to prison/declaring this to future employers. I have offered to pay back and this was rejected.

Im not looking for Sympathy, just for a way forward because I really feel like ending it all today. I’ve applied for Christmas temp work today but not sure if anything will come from it.

I'd get a solicitor. It will take a weight off your shoulders to have the support.

I haven’t read all the responses but I would say this. I highly doubt you would be prosecuted for £900 I do not think CPS would deem it in the public interest.
The police would need to investigate and gather evidence to send to the CPS to prove that you have committed fraud beyond reasonable doubt. I would imagine the fact that your claims were not checked properly by your manager would be quite key. If in the unlikely event it did go to court you would not be sent to prison for this unless there were aggravating factors such as other offences or in a position of trust. I deal with fraud investigations so I do know about this area.
i would definitely take legal advice it may be a case of unfair dismissal

Also if you have an ongoing health condition and they haven’t made adjustments etc then your case could constitute disability discrimination

I also wonder whether they’ve said police may get involved to hope you scuttle off quietly and hope they don’t rather than fight it?

Id say that's pretty certain, its a scare tactic, to put the OP off taking any action.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but isn't there a chance to appeal?

Why go to a&e?

ACAS are crap, Op you need a good employment lawyer to get you out of this in the best way.

im a finance director and in my time I’ve uncovered fraud in the hundreds of thousands. I have only managed to get a police investigation once. The generally are of the view that unless you targeted vulnerable people (charity) abused a position of power (bank worker etc) it’s just not in the public interest. Someone submitting a fake document to a private company, they see it as a failure of the companies controls and their problem (and they have a point)

You are 100% not going to prison for this my love. I’m no legal expert but we can’t find room in our prisons for paedophiles, let alone someone who has submitted a claim incorrectly at work so that’s not happening. Contact ACAS and an employment law solicitor. I should imagine that they can get you out of this to a good degree with all the mitigating circumstances. Just remember that almost everything is solvable, you will live to fight another day! Your employer maybe could have even been negligent in their looking after you when you’ve been ill etc - best to get a professional opinion.

The police wont care, tell them it was a mistake itll get dropped

I think it is because it's not a single incident but several times OP forgot to remove milage manually.

You need to fight this.
I know you're exhausted but this could ruin your life.

A good employment lawyer should give you a free initial consultation and they'll also keep things to the point without waffle.

Drop an email to one and follow up with a call if you've the breath for it. They should tell you the strength of your case and give you advice plus fees.

I would definitely contact ACAS for advice OP and look at the companies disciplinary policy to make sure they have followed it correctly. I know you probably don't want to go back there but I would argue the gross misconduct claim and perhaps they will agree a resignation with you returning the over claimed money.

Did these errors in mileage occur after your stay in intensive care? I’m an ICU nurse and people often struggle with memory and cognition after being in ICU, it’s known as post ICU syndrome and is a very very real and evidence based condition. I think you could make a case that errors made were a result of ill health and not deliberate. Read the link below and see if it rings true for you.

https://www.icudelirium.org/patients-and-families/pics

I think they were looking for a reason to let you go due to recent absences. This was an easy one.

However, they are obliged to follow a process. First thing you need to do is get a copy of their disciplinary process and staff handbook as you will need to appeal this decision. As the claim system is part- automated, I think a fair process is unlikely to have been followed for disciplinary. Unlikely to go straight to dismissal without following other specific procedures.

This is your life, OP and will have long term impacts so you do need to fight it and ACAS will help you.

I think this is appalling! I’ve no idea of what it means legally but I would fight it. Surely it’s a ridiculous system if you have to cancel automated mileage. They need to change the system! How can they dismiss someone and threaten legal action for that? Outrageous. Sorry OP, I really feel for you.

They were looking for a way to get rid because OP was meant to be maternity cover but they have her on a permanent contract. The woman on maternity is back at work, and there is nothing for OP to do. So they had a good rummage through her expenses claims while she was in hospital.

Cancelling an automatic mileage is no harder than filling it in in the first place - debating the system is weak - you are expected to check your claims is quite fair

Unless they warned you about the meeting, and gave you time to prepare, they haven't followed a fair process under employment law. That means that you'll likely have a v good case at an employment tribunal to get compensation (almost regardless of whether you did anything wrong, that's how it works, they MUST have a fair process for these things, and follow it meticulously).

Like others I'd suggest u get advice from an expert, and it may be worth asking the employer by email what the appeal process is, just to help them dig themselves a deeper hole (they definitely should have provided you with information on how to appeal, if they don't answer, or say you can't appeal, they'll make it even easier to win at tribunal!).

@HoldingOnatoday did you bring up the whistleblowing when you spoke to ACAS? https://www.acas.org.uk/whistleblowing-at-work

It sounds very unfair. At most companies your budget holder or line manager has to approve it before it’s submitted. Then it may be audited or not. If this is the case it’s on the approved not you I think. Also it’s not like you put these expenses on your sheet, you just didn’t remove them when meeting was cancelled. I think that’s on your company not you. Expenses should never be loaded in advance as things change for example you might have been sick that day, or car might’ve broken down. It seems a strange way to auto load your expenses for you to delete if they didn’t happen

I think you need to be more realistic than many of the sympathetic answers you have here.

No, I don't think you will, nor should go to prison for this.
But I don't think it's anything like as clearshot as you will win a fight against them.

But what you've written here, if I was investigating, would definitely raise alarm bells.
I've been in a situation with someone committing fraud, not to the extent you have, and everything had an answer which seemed reasonable for each individual incident. Just the number of "accidents" was a little bit hard to believe, and I think you'll be in that situation.
"I was distracted", "I meant to let them know", "It was an accident", "of course I'll pay what I can back", "I've had a terrible time recently..." and it sounded a terrible misfortune... until an email was found which made it clear that it was deliberate and further investigation showed that it had gone back years.

The two things that I noticed from your Op is:
I disputed some which were left on an agree to disagrees ; lots of people think the 9% was bad. There was more. How much more? If you're talking about another £100, then that's not that bad. If you're talking about another £900 then that's worse if it's more than that, then I think you are looking in bad waters.
And on what grounds are you disagreeing? That you did the miles, or that you didn't claim them? Because you haven't left it as they agree you didn't fraudulently claim: you've left it as they still think you did; you say you didn't. So their investigation will be taking those into consideration, and looking at those.

The other thing is:
It’s been a tough time recently, lost my mum and then I got Pneumonia and ended up in intensive care for six weeks
That's only really going to wash as an excuse if all, or pretty much all, the events were after this. If that is the case, then you'll probably have a reasonable case for asking them to take this into consideration; but if you are still on O2, so it sounds like most were before, then it looks like an excuse.

Yes, I would phone ACAS, and maybe a solicitor. But you need to be honest with them.
Are they going to find, if they investigate, more claims dating back years?
Why do some of the claims get automatically cancelled, and others don't? Is it something you should have done?
And how much total are they saying you claimed fraudulently?
What's your defence for the ones you disagree about?
Are there likely to be others in the same situation?
Have you ever had a similar accusation before, or been caught out on expenses?

If you're not honest with them, then they can't give you the advice you need and then you may be barking up the wrong tree, which is unlikely to help your case.

I’m not planning on putting any case forward against anyone. The other agree to disagree amount was £34. I just wanted to know if there was a likelihood (which I know nobody can tell me) if I’d go to prison or not or end up with a criminal record. I didn’t fight back or argue because I’m not fit enough truthfully and have accepted what is, and I’ve started applying for Christmas work. They’d threatened me with the police and I just wanted to know if anyone had any insight of what that process would look like. As I said, I’m not excusing my behaviour and have accepted dismissal and potential police action, but there was a lot going on that again had made me scatty in my admin (again no excuse) and my manager hadn’t noticed either.

I’ve had many jobs over the years and never had anything like this. I’ve never even had a disciplinary or warning.

NRTFT, but a friend of ours, used to work in the public sector and handled employees’ problems, complaints, etc. He said if the powers that be, wanted to get rid of someone, they’d go through the expense claims, looking for errors; as it’s an easier way to get rid of them, than bringing up the real reason!

Could it be this OP?

I think your first port of call is your GP. Because if this goes down a legal line, I think it’s important that it’s recorded medically how unwell you were and how unwell you are now since being fired. I would also ask your GP to refer you for counselling.

I think you should’ve been allowed to have somebody present at this meeting and I think your former boss should have done things differently and their system needs to be reviewed.

it’s going to be very hard for you to get better physically with this hanging over you. Whatever you did or didn’t do, they’ve been very heavy-handed and in this day and age, they should know that situations like this need to be dealt with care and consideration.

Please Look after yourself. 💐

I wish you the very best. Please look after yourself.