A payroll clerk at flooring company Airea has avoided a prison sentence despite defrauding the company of more than £22,500.
Part of Sadie Lodge’s role at the manufacturer was to prepare payroll spreadsheets, but management discovered names that ‘should not have been there,’ Leeds Crown Court was told.
The bank details for the names were all linked to Lodge, with payments between January and March 2020 ranging from £150 to £5,244. She made payment to Wakefield Council to pay her rent, while the company credit card was used to buy goods with various online accounts at Argos, eBay and Virgin Media. In total she had defrauded the company of £22,508.
Lodge admitted fraud and an offence of stalking linked to her partner’s former partner: she had sent messages, made false complaints to social services and damaged her car. Lodge has 13 convictions for 20 previous offences, from 2008 to 2021, including fraud.
Although she pleaded guilty on 6 April, judge Robin Mairs told her that he needed time to consider her sentence so remanded her into custody at New Hall prison in Flockton, West Yorkshire.
Sentencing her on 11 April, he told her: ‘You richly deserve to go back to HMP New Hall. That’s what prison is like, you have had four days of it. If you breach the order I give you, I will, without hesitation, send you back to New Hall. If you stick your hand in the till of any new company, you will comeback before me and go back to New Hall.
‘This was not a spur-of-the-moment offence, it was calculated. You doctored those spreadsheets so you could take away £22,508.’
He sentenced her to 20 months in prison, suspended for 24 months, 200 hours of unpaid work and ordered a restraining order of indeterminate length in relation to the stalking.
