Fraudster addicted to TV SHOPPING stole £370,000 from her employer

[dutchman]

Denise Clifford rarely opened her purchases, hoarding some and giving others to charity



A worker at a Coventry firm stole more than £370,000 from them by creating fake expense claims - then blew it on television shopping channels.

Denise Clifford was so obsessed she rarely used any of her purchases, handing some over to charity shops and hoarding the rest, some unopened, in a spare room.

Clifford had worked as a finance assistant at Amtico, a flooring company with its head office in Kingfield Road, Foleshill, for a number of years.

But in March last year it was discovered that large amounts of money, supposedly being paid to employees in expenses, had gone missing and been diverted to a single account.

That account was traced to Clifford, of Smorrall Lane, Bedworth, and following her arrest large numbers of items of jewellery, footwear, handbags and other purchases, many of them unopened, were found at her home.

When she was interviewed, she accepted submitted false expenses claims in the names of other employees which she got her managers to sign before diverting the payments to her own account.

Despite the staggering extent of her dishonesty, Clifford’s barrister, QC Stephen Linehan, persuaded a judge at Warwick Crown Court not to send her immediately to prison.

Clifford, aged 48, had pleaded guilty to two charges of fraud in abuse of a position of trust as finance assistant at Amtico International in Coventry.

She was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for two years, with supervision for two years, and was ordered to do 120 hours of unpaid work and to take part in a women’s programme.

Clifford explained that she had developed a shopping addiction which had given her some comfort following a marriage break-down – and it had just continued.

She was earning £26,000 a year at the time, but spent night after night buying items on TV shopping channels and, to a lesser degree, online sites including Amazon.

Clifford was charged, and after she pleaded guilty at the crown court to a fraud involving her obtaining £195,295 between August 2007 and March last year, the case was adjourned for pre-sentence and psychiatric reports to be prepared.

But in the meantime, further diverted sums came to light, and she subsequently pleaded guilty to a further charge of fraud involving the obtaining of £182,552 between 2008 and 2011.

Sentencing Clifford, Recorder Christopher Tickle told her: “These large sums were stolen over a period beginning in 2007 and concluding in 2016.

“You were left with a husband working nights, and you fell prey to a lonely life which led you to shopping channels.

“When such large sums of money go missing, one looks at high-days and holidays, but there was none of that in this case. You were buying loads and loads of shoes and handbags, and loads of worthless jewellery.

“There were a vast amount of items seized which at auction would fetch practically nothing. The benefit to you out of all this seems to be negligible; you’ve just got a lot of stuff.”