Gambling addict finance director forges 2,200 checks

Gambling addict finance director stole £1.8m from chartered surveyor firm by forging 2,200 cheques
By Daily Mail Reporter

A financial director who plundered £1.8m from a top firm of chartered surveyors to feed his gambling addiction has been jailed for four years.

Andrew Stubbs, 41, blew the fortune on football and horse racing after forging more than 2,200 cheques over an eight year period while working for Leslie Clark Construction Consultants.

He faked the signature of the firm’s senior partner to cash up to three £1,000 cheques a day, Southwark Crown Court heard.
The £45,000-a-year financial director almost singlehandedly bankrupted the company.

The partners were forced to re-mortgage their homes, raid their savings and lay off staff to bail out the company after Stubbs was arrested in May 2011, the court was told.

Stubbs, of Banstead, Surrey, tried to pass the fraud off as an ‘almighty error’ when HMRC levelled demands against the firm for unpaid tax.

Jailing Stubbs, Judge Jeffrey Pegden QC said: ‘It is difficult to overstate the impact that your criminal offending has had on the partners and employees of Leslie Clark and indeed the partners and indeed, of course as I accept, upon your own family.

‘This was criminal offending which took place over eight years and resulted in a loss of £1.8m to the small but prestigious firm.

‘That loss nearly had the most disastrous effect upon the firm and those who work there.

It’s quite plain that only through the immense personal sacrifices was that partnership saved, and through enormous personal loss and sacrifice by the partners.

‘That personal cost will remain with them for many years and of course their families.

‘This was a gross breach of trust, a gross abuse of a senior fiduciary position.’

Stubbs, who the court was told had been gambling since he left school, admitted theft and false accounting earlier this year.

Gavin Ludlow-Thompson, prosecuting, said the fraud was ‘substantial and sophisticated’ and described Leslie Clark as a top 30 firm employing roughly 60 people.

He said Stubbs began work at Leslie Clark in 1998 as a financial controller but was promoted to financial director of the partnership a few years later.

‘Around that time, we say, he embarked upon a course of criminal conduct,’ he said.

‘Abusing his position of trust, which was very significant in this case, he would forge the signature of the senior partner and raise cheques which he would then place in personal back accounts - accounts in his name.

‘Some 2,249 such cheques have been identified.

‘It started back in May 2003 and this carried on until May 19, 2011, and the total stolen from the company is a sum slightly in excess of £1.8m.’

The court heard Stubbs raised cheques of between £500 and £1,000, as there was no ‘checking mechanism’ for cheques of under £1,000.

Mr Ludlow-Thompson said: ‘Matters came to light in February 2011 when the partners all individually received demands from HMRC.

They received bills for unpaid debts in the form of VAT and PAYE, and the debt by that stage had accrued to something in excess of £600,000.

‘The partners were all threatened with bankruptcy if they failed to pay the debt within 21 days.

‘They went to speak to Stubbs and he assured them it was just an almighty error and that he would sort it out with the revenue.

‘That never happened because the partners subsequently received further demands from HMRC for other amounts.’

The barrister said Stubbs had been ‘deferring payments that the firm were required to pay both for VAT and PAYE’ and diverting them into his own account.

He said: ‘This was a small company put, we say, at risk, singlehandedly due to his efforts, of being put into bankruptcy.

‘The situation is this; the total debt to the revenue came to just over £1m.’

He added that thee partners had been able to meet the tax bill through a variety of means but several employees had lost their jobs as a result of the fraud.

Jeffrey Shine, defending, said his client had been working with Gamblers Anonymous in Putney, south west London, and had not placed a bet for six months.

He said Stubbs had been ‘humiliated’ by what had happened adding: ‘Just to admit his addiction is in itself not an easy thing’.