I've been so stupid, im scared to death

[Scaredashell13]

Please don't judge, I've made a horrendously stupid mistake and im so scared what's going to happen to me and my two children.
A couple of years ago I had a breakdown and started gambling again (I started gambling after my 2nd dc was born but stopped after a year with help). A long story short, in the space of 9 months I stole approx 36k from my employer who happens to be a local authority. They found out and I was subsequently sacked. I admitted everything and provided all evidence they requested such as bank statements etc. I have now registered with Gamban and Gamcare, my Drs have increased my medication which helped me get out of the dark place I was in. I considered suicide almost daily but my two children are the only reason i'm here. I have since worked on myself and have a new job and doing well....until today. I came home to a court summons in the post with a court date just after Christmas. This will be the first hearing and i'm praying to God I'm not sent into custody. I am absolutely petrified and have been sick with the thought of not being with my children (age 12 and 15). I'm so scared. I dont have any family, I was raised in the care system. I dont have any friends I can confide in, and im a single parent. What do I tell my children, how do I tell my children? I could face a prison sentence up to 10 years. I have reached out to a solicitor today and hoping they'll contact me tomorrow. I feel like im already slipping back into that dark place. Im so stupid and I wish I could turn back time. I just want to hug my children and never let go.

I once worked with a woman who scammed her annual salary's worth of treats by putting them all through as business entertainment. When you think about it, fashion, beauty and travel brand names sound a lot like restaurants and bars if you aren't familiar with either. Accounts should have done at least some random checks, though. She was sacked but the company never recovered the money.

I was slightly envious! She had a lot of nice clothes & shoes 👀

All humans make mistakes. All humans don't steal. All the threads on here over time about how LAs have no money and services are crap.

But when someone admits to stealing from that money for a gambling addiction? "Oh, poor you." Make it make sense.

You probably won't go to prison. I bet they take having children into account.

I am a Senior Financial Analyst.

People who are writing this off as a mistake are massively underestimating the time, intent and manipulation involved to steal such a significant amount of money over a 9 month period. Especially in public sector where processes are much stricter and long winded than the private sector.

I’ve not read all of your posts OP but I’m assuming you were forging invoices and bank details of vendors/subcontractors, with the intent for the money to be paid directly to yourself via the BACs runs or ad-hocs? If that’s the case, then every single payment made from the bank would have gone through approximately 3 senior/director level individuals for sign off, where they’d review the relating (fraudulent) documents. The spends would then be reviewed by a Management Accountant(s) on a monthly basis to include in their costing reports. As an Analyst of 10 years who started off as an MA I’m amazed you got away with this for 9 months in the LA. I came across one case like this years ago and it got picked up on in the first instance.

I’m also guessing the individual(s) who signed off your payments and failed to pick up on this sooner were most likely made examples of and fired (which could be seen as fair to a lot of people, they were obviously not being vigilant enough)

Having said all of this I have never struggled with addiction, and I don’t know your life story. I hope you are not sentenced to prison for your children’s sake.

You haven’t read my post where I say tosh as Council’s are wasting £millions. Those who are making decisions should be locked up.

Vunerable people ??!!

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-68540271

@Nevs I used a corporate credit card (which I had for 4 years before mis-using it) I never reconciled the payments I spent during the 9 months, both legitimate and fraudulent transactions. I asked for the card to be removed from me several times which was not acknowledged. No other person within the work place has been reprimanded, which I feel is right, it was me who misused the card and stole. Despite the prosecution saying this was a sophisticated means of fraud, it really wasnt. I used the credit card to make purchases.

@Scaredashell13 I work in an LA but have never had a company credit card. I don't know anyone who has. But if I ever have to buy anything for work, I have to produce a VAT receipt which obviously has the name of the company on it.

The last time I put through a receipt on expenses was months ago, when I had to go to London for a course. The receipt was something like "£56 to Greater Anglia Network" and I had to submit it with my confirmed course booking so that Finance could check the dates matched and I hadn't waltzed off somewhere for a jolly day out.

If I'd submitted a receipt that said £100 to William Hill Bookies" then it would immediately be picked up. I just don't understand how you could be spending money in bookies or on scratch cards or whatever for months on end and it wasn't picked up, unless you were deliberately falsifying and hiding what you were doing.

I really hope you don't go to prison, as it would be counter productive. But I do think you're doing a lot of minimising.

I thought gambling companies banned the use of credit cards a fair few years ago now? I think it's really hard to know what to advise without knowing what method of gambling and how you were able to do it etc. a lot of unanswered questions which appreciate you may not want to share x

I see. I agree that using a company credit card is far from sophisticated, however this is where I disagree;

No other person within the work place has been reprimanded, which I feel is right, it was me who misused the card and stole

It was your card which you used, but the responsibility of the funds spent on said card falls ultimately beyond yourself. The Finance Director and your superior had a duty to ensure you are accounting for your payments and using it appropriately. The monthly statement payments for your credit card would have been paid from the same bank account as any other generic Bacs or ad-hoc payment would be made from, and the same audit processes needed to be applied.

When you say didn’t “reconcile the payments”, do you mean you didn’t submit your credit card expenses to Finance? (provide receipts/invoices, give a narrative of purchase of funds, which department/budget code they relate to)

If so the fact that you were allowed to not declare this for 9 months is baffling to me, I have never heard of such lenience applied to an employee. Even Director level people are held to account when owning a company credit card. Also from a financial reporting perspective I’d struggle to generate a costing report or forecast if I had a 5 figure amount of funds unaccounted for and I didn’t know what it had been spent on. This is ultimately why I implied someone superior to you needs to take part of the responsibility.

If I'd submitted a receipt that said £100 to William Hill Bookies" then it would immediately be picked up. I just don't understand how you could be spending money in bookies or on scratch cards or whatever for months on end and it wasn't picked up, unless you were deliberately falsifying and hiding what you were doing.

She mentioned in her previous post that she didn’t “reconcile the payments”. I assume she means she did not declare her spending transactions or provide any receipts for them. Which begs the question- why was she not prompted or held to account for this within those 9 months? I’ve worked in Finance for many years and I’ve never heard of anything like this.

In that case there’s no way you should be liable for it? Surely your employer would have to prove you stole it, not just suspect that you might have done?

I presume the card balance was paid automatically by the authority and expense forms were chased up when they were late: email to Scaredashell3, your expenses are late, can you send them by Friday? Etc.

Then maybe there's a backlog in checking the forms and receipts. Perhaps policy was to only look at expenditure when the forms and receipts came in. 90% of people send them in and they're dealt with. A few persistent late submitters - Sarah is always a month behind but sends it in eventually etc.

And someone realises Scared's expenses are 3-4 months overdue. Maybe at that point someone looks at the amounts. Then it takes months for a proper investigation and disciplinary process to work through.

But as much as I stretch the limits of what might have happened in an under-funded and over-stretched local authority, I don't understand why the card wasn't stopped after a few months - because, in organisations I've run, any member of staff who failed to submit expenses would have had their card blocked or cancelled.

And as you said about five figure sums sitting on the balance sheet, surely it would have come to light at quarter end? Maybe it was year end when they did something. And even if the money was a drop in the ocean comparatively, it's hardly a rounding error.

Obviously Scared committed a crime. She's pled guilty and will be punished and has to pay the money back. But the gambling companies have a responsibility here. And I agree, someone at the local authority, whether by negligence or recklessness, allowed the spending to continue. Systems should exist to pick up on this kind of crime and to prevent it.

I agree with @Nevs, too. It was somebody's job to track where the money goes, and they failed. Before you go all indignant, I am not saying this makes theft OK. I'm saying LAs are full of incompetent jerks who should be held to account, instead of blaming someone else for their own failures.

I know someone at a local authority that signed off a £6m regeneration project. The project had been through all the processes and funds were about to be released, when my friend realised no diligence had been done on the provider. My friend did a Google search (that much diligence, lol), which revealed the guy has a history of scamming LAs in exactly the same way. It might even be the same chap linked upthread, it sounds the same. He takes the money and doesn't even begin the projects: it's hardly sophisticated, he just relies on them being lazy.

My friend saved his employer £6m and was treated as a troublemaker. A similar thing happened to another employee of the same LA, who pointed out that the man they'd engaged to make everything 'gender aware', or whatever they called it, is a convicted sex offender whose social media illustrated that his objective was to get paid for making the city's children more readily available to predators.

This is tangential to OP's situation, except in so far as the supposedly responsible department at the LA may well be dumping other losses on her, rather than owning up to having shirked their job for a year or more.

Yes @GarlicSound, I’ve been wondering how so many people seem to find it hard to believe there’s an LA that’s being run badly - I see it literally every day of my life. And not just LA’s. I have a friend who recently transferred from private to public sector and he can’t believe how the management run things especially with expenses. He’s been used to proving every tiny expense, and where he is now they treat it like they have a huge pot of government money and they don’t care where it goes. When he tried to raise it, he was quite firmly shut down by his superiors as they all clearly want it that way.

I totally agree with this and hope she doesn't get a custodial sentence, but the same sentiment should also apply to someone stealing £100 of groceries without the more sophisticated knowledge of how to steal 71k, they are also as likely to reoffend or be rehabilitated on the outside as anyone else. Prison does not prevent reoffended and they should have the same rights as someone who has a comfortably well off existence. I remember another thread where a young single mum got piled on for stealing formula and a mascara. The double standards are astounding.

@Scaredashell13

Obviously none of us have any certainty of whether or not you'll go to prison, but, as others have said, you're doing yourself no favours by claiming all this was a 'mistake' you made.
It wasn't a mistake at all, you consistently stole from the public purse, it wasn't a 'one off" event (and that would be wrong enough) , you continued until you were caught.

You've said you wanted to be caught, which is why you didn't reconcile payments, but I wonder if people listening to your case will be questioning that statement. I'd be wondering if you deliberately didn't reconcile any payments because you wanted to 'muddy the waters' by mixing legitimate purchases amongst your fraudulent ones in case anyone looked into discrepancies, rather than you did it because you wanted to be caught.
I'd also be wondering why you didn't quit your job as soon as you knew you'd done wrong, and own up to your addiction, or if you couldn't own up, at least you'd have taken yourself away from temptation and the ability to continue to steal.

I'd be wondering if you were really remorseful only because you were found out, and I'd also wonder why you've only just registered with associations like Gamcare if you knew you had a gambling addiction, have you only done this for the benefit of the Court people might wonder ?

You've managed to get help before for gambling, people might also question why you didn't seek that same help again to help you quit, instead of using your position to fund your lifestyle. There's so many factors to take into account, but for your kids sake, I do hope you're not given jail time, but that you're made to pay every single penny you stole back.

A random one from me, if there was over £70,000 spent, but no reconciliation, then what kind of limit is that on a credit card? Surely for the credit card to be paid down, then there would need to be reconciliation?

You know how she could have been caught if she wanted to be? By coming clean and owning up.

By doing it the way she did she invited drama and fear into her life and into her children’s lives. I can’t believe you are all falling for this. It is classic addict behaviour - to minimise and justify; to lie so well that you convince yourself you are telling the truth. You are not helping her with all this “kindness”. If she had a true addiction - and 80k of mess suggest that she did - she would have had to have been neglecting her children. Now that she is going to court she fears for them?

if she is really coming clean she needs to stop minimising, stop with the clouded thinking - not reconciling payments means she deliberately did a shit job and is therefore guilty of misconduct. Her denial means that she is at risk of repeating the “mistake”.

Do I want her to go to prison and for her children to be deprived of a mother? No. Do I think those children deserve a mother who is clear thinking and honest enough not to slip back into addiction? Yes.

How do you know it was OP who had your post deleted ? Could anyone could have reported it. And MN don’t delete posts because an OP doesn’t like something you’ve said, they delete because you’ve broken talk guidelines. And yet here you are repeating the stuff that got you deleted in the first place.

@GrooveArmada of course anyone can try and pin blame on someone for something they haven’t done. That is the whole reason courts exist in the first place.

The outstanding balance on the card wasn’t £70k. Most company credit cards balances are paid monthly by the company via Direct Debit. The card holder then provides receipts and narratives for each individual transaction from the monthly statement to the Finance department, who then code accordingly and account for it on their books at their end. For whatever reason they allowed her to not declare this for 9 months, her card should have been cancelled and she should have been investigated much sooner. There was negligence on managements side.

£70k over 9 months suggests she likely only had a credit limit of £8k-£10k, which is standard across practise I’ve found from working in Finance for many years.

This is all very easy for someone without an addiction to say. The reality isn’t nearly so straightforward and hindsight is 20/20.

OP is doing the best she can and posted for advice on what her next move should be after receiving the summons. She has mental health problems, which for all we know, may have contributed to the addiction - she is clearly vulnerable and there has been mention of suicide. She also posted in legal matters, and yet so many posters are treating this as AIBU, completely ignoring the reason she posted, and concentrating on lecturing her about the severity of the crime she has committed, over and over and over again, and now you’re bringing in completely unsubstantiated accusations of child neglect without a shred of understanding of her circumstances.

OP knows she did wrong, she knows she stole from public funds intended for the vulnerable, she’s accepted that she will be punished, and has co-operated in arrangements to pay back the money she stole. I don’t see her minimising anything - in life terms she has made a huge mistake, which will impact the rest of her life in various ways. In her position, and with a forensic accountant’s verdict that £47k is the total debt, I would want to query where the LA had come up with the other £31k because there doesn’t seem to have been proper oversight of the use of the card, and my worry would be that those who have failed in that duty are looking to offload it onto OP. She admits that she didn’t reconcile, so now there is a problem, but the LA can’t just add another £31k to the total outstanding without proof that OP misappropriated the funds.

There’s a lot of judgement which is not what OP posted for. And from a personal point of view, the pile on is worthy of AIBU. It has no place in legal matters where an OP is looking for advice and support.

I do not understand why some of you are coming to bash OP over the head as if she isn’t potentially facing a custodial sentence.

she is going face the consequences of her actions. There is no escaping. What is the point? Do you just need to twist the knife in and do a jig on your moral high ground.

we are evolved humans ffs, you can do better that throwing tomatoes at someone already in the stocks.

Regarding telling your children OP, there is no way that it won’t be hard. But I would do it a in a quiet calm environment, give them the opportunity to ask questions or write them down if they prefer. Reminding them how much you care and love them as well trying to do the right thing and get the help you need.

I can’t promise everything will be ok, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Truly.

I do have some sympathy with the op and understand that this is addiction but I do get annoyed when people minimise crime by saying I made a mistake. Politicians do this all the time, they make "mistakes" on their tax return or expenses claim. You are or maybe were a thief. You chose to steal. Admit it.

I think OP’s characterisation of this as a mistake is being misinterpreted. She admits she stole and has accepted full responsibility for it, including facing the personal consequences including possible custodial sentence, and has made arrangements to start paying it back. The characterisation of a mistake is an accurate one in life terms. OP has made a monumental mistake, the consequences of which will shape the rest of her life. She’s not minimising anything and she posted for support.

What support do you think she’s going to get from yet another poster pointing out she’s committed theft ? It’s been stated and restated over and over and over ad nauseam ? We get it, OP gets it. She hasn’t posted since yesterday - probably because she’s tired of defending herself from posters determined to put the boot in. I doubt she’ll be back, so well done everyone.

Can your ex employer get the statements ?
Then you can prove that some of it was work expenses?