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| Gittens: Nicked £116K |
The boss of a bankrupt luxury Selfridges beauty salon broke down in tears as she revealed how her crooked bookkeeper lied to her face while stealing £116,000 from the company.
Susan Baddeley, 47, was forced to place Groom London Ltd. - which charged customers up to £175 an hour - into liquidation earlier this year.
She was unaware Thelma Gittens, 54, of Montgomery House, Harrow Road, Paddington was forging invoices and accounts during the four-year swindle.
Unusually, Ms Baddeley delivered her victim impact statement in person at Blackfriars Crown Court, which heard she fought to keep her business afloat throughout the fraud.
“My trust was shattered by Thelma Gittens’s awful betrayal,” she told the court, describing the demise of the company she ran for fourteen years as “incredibly painful” and “horrific.”
She hired Gittens as a self-employed bookkeeper in 2008. “I trusted her just like everyone else in my team.”
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| "Trust Shattered": Susan Baddeley |
The company relied on a bank overdraft to survive and Ms Baddeley was forced to borrow £10,000 from her parents to keep Groom afloat.
Gittens knew about the family loan, but still took money from the company’s account the following day.
It was revealed during liquidation proceedings Gittens had transferred £60,715 into her account, plus another £55,757 to a relative’s account.
“These were regular on a monthly basis,” said prosecutor Mr. Obi Mgbokwere.”
Gittens, who claims she took the money to pay her mother’s medical bills in the Philippines, desperately tried to cover her tracks.
“She deleted files on two separate occasions and a total of twenty-five thousand payroll files were deleted,” added Mr. Mgbokwere.
“Once she realised the net was really closing in she said she was sorry and sent a letter to Ms Baddeley, but this was just a cut-and-paste letter she found on google.”
Ms Baddeley told the court Gittens had full access to the company bank account and even tried to buy it for a knock-down price from the official receiver to cover her tracks.
“I could not understand why the business got into such a bad financial state. I was shocked and numbed by the discovery Thelma Gittens was double invoicing her pay and paying someone else.
“She had been falsifying invoices and accounts and took advantage even though she knew the company was struggling financially.
“It was calculated and self-motivated and showed a complete disregard for me and the staff.
“She even tried to buy the company for a nominal fee to cover-up what she had done in a hard-hearted and cynical way.”
Ms Baddeley described the cut-and-paste ‘apology’ letter in which Gittens expressed her Christian values as “abhorrent.”
Gittens pleaded guilty to one count of fraud by abuse of position between January 1, 2013 and February 28, this year and was bailed until October 19 for sentencing.
Judge Michael Simon told her not to assume she would avoid custody because he was requesting a pre-sentence report.
“This offence carries a high likelihood of a prison sentence,” he told her, ordering her to surrender her passport to police as a condition of bail.
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