Accountant Gets Four Years For Nicking £1.3M From Bosses

Employer: Hurford Salvi Carr

The trusted financial controller of a firm of estate agents, who looted £1.3m from under the noses of her bosses to fund expensive holidays and luxury goods, has been locked-up for four years.

Karen Chin, 45, of North Hill, Highgate was employed by Hurford Salvi Carr (HSC) at their HQ in Britton Street, Clerkenwell, where she diverted clients' funds into multiple bank and credit card accounts she controlled.

Her former employers claim much of the money has been blown on high-living, spending sprees and holidays, including the rental of a private plane and a £35,000 family vacation to Mauritius.

She ignored a High Court financial freezing order brought by her former employer and kept thirteen credit card accounts secret along with two bank accounts and a £20,000 cash transfer.

"This woman sought a psychological distraction by buying shiny toys in a pathetic effort to cheer herself up," her lawyer Mr. Neville Rudston told Blackfriars Crown Court on Friday. "There's nothing left worth talking about, she's in ruin."

The fraud cost the mother-of-one her marriage and the £1.2m family home will now be sold, with HSC receiving £400,000 and another £25,000 being raised from the sale of property seized from Chin.

"You syphoned money into your own accounts. Some of it was the tenants deposits, some was the company's money," Judge David Richardson told her. "Your first reaction when caught was to cover your tracks with fraudulent emails. 

"The impact on the company has been considerable and you committed the funds to an extravagant lifestyle, luxury holidays, clothing and the like.

"It was a gross breach of trust, which involved planning and was sophisticated and you did not comply with court orders freezing your assets." 

Prosecutor Mr. David Markham told the court Chin was employed as a four days per week financial controller on a £38,000 a year salary and had been with the company since 1999 until she was sacked on June 25, 2013.

Chin made a total of 304 money transfers into her own accounts between 2008 and 2013.

"She was trusted with the company chequebook and all the online payments, but an audit report revealed she had been dishonestly syphoning off client account funds into her own accounts.

"She was authorised to make payments and transfers and was a co-signatory with the directors of the company."

When the huge shortfall was discovered Chin's email history was demanded by her bosses.

"She produced three emails that appeared to be doctored by cutting and pasting and inserting fake text. She falsified them to cover the theft of funds."

On June 28, 2013 the High Court froze Chin's assets, including her family home and a £50,000 cheque she wrote to her former employers bounced.

HSC say Chin ignored two High Court warrants to appear, moved money to secret accounts and has shown no remorse.

Chin was eventually questioned about the fraud. "She said she did not know why she did it and it was not as if she needed the money and said she would pay it back," added Mr. Markham.

"It is conduct that eventually was always bound to come to light and has resulted in the ruin of a woman who has worked herself up from a modest background to working as a book keeper and accountant," said Mr. Rudston.

"She is now a pariah and has lost her family, friends and social worker. She's disgraced after making the classic mistake of putting her fingers in the till."

Chin pleaded guilty to nine counts of fraud by abuse of a position of trust between February 19, 2008 and February 19, 2013 and asked for three offences under the Theft Act committed before 2008 to be taken into consideration.