Bankruptcy Deputy Jailed For Stealing £85K

The deputy official receiver of Croydon was jailed for a year today by a judge who condemned her for taking £85,000 from people facing bankruptcy - blowing some of the money on a Far East holiday and furnishing her home.

Mother-of-two Samantha Jane O'Sullivan, 44, (pictured) of Davidson road, Croydon convinced solicitors, representing insolvent clients, to write cheques payable to her instead of her office and also simply pocketed cash payments made over the counter.

Ironically, the one-time £43,000 a year civil servant was forced to sell her own home, which the Insolvency Service had a charge on, to pay back some of the money she took, but is still £29,000 short.

"You are a lady with a degree and for twenty years you have worked in the financial world and worked with people who were insolvent and saw the difficulties they had," Croydon Crown Court Judge Ruth Downing told the first-time offender.

"There were other ways for you to deal with this other than stealing eighty-five thousand pounds from people in financial difficulties.

"There are thousands of people in this country giving up their homes and financial investments to cope with their financial circumstances.

"They did not have the opportunity to tap into significant sums of money as you did in your job.

"They would never have given you the money if they knew you were going to spend it on a holiday to Cambodia."

O'Sullivan also spent money on clearing debts left by her ex-husband and gave cash gifts to friends, office colleagues and her parents, claiming she had benefitted from a large inheritance.

She pleaded guilty to six counts of fraud by abuse of position between February 14 and March 22, last year in relation to £1,715; £43,142; £1,500; £15,000; £18,383 and £6,253.

Cash payments she stole from the office included £1,500 one woman paid to secure the ownership of her own property and a statutory fee of £1,715. 

The remaining frauds involved hoodwinking two solicitors and an individual to make cheques payable to herself when financially desperate people were forced to sell their homes to cover debts.

After selling her family home for £237,000 O'Sullivan repaid £56,000 to the Insolvency Service and moved into rented accommodation and claimed benefits.

"The victims were clearly vulnerable, they were already bankrupt," said prosecutor Miss Olivia Kong.

"She was suffering moderate to severe depression and had emotionally unstable personality disorder on the basis of the impulsivity of her behaviour and inability to plan ahead," said Miss Abigail Penny, defending.

"She had been in a marriage with a man who had drug problems and he ran up significant debts on her credit cards and she paid a substantial amount of money, around twenty-three thousand pounds, for him to get a plumbing qualification and lost all the money."

O'Sullivan's employers told her she could not work at the office if she declared herself bankrupt.

"She thought there was no way back," added Miss Penny. "She realised what she did at the time was abhorrent as the deputy official receiver and always intended to pay the money back.

"She handed over to the official receiver anything she had of value and now feels she has nothing left in terms of dignity, professional standing and everything she has worked for."

Judge Downing added: "It is an overwhelming abuse of a position of trust. She has taken eighty-five thousand pounds of other people's money to sort out her financial affairs."