© Derbyshire Police Karen Brailsford
A gambling addict must sell her house, car and luxury possessions to pay back a fraction of the £1.6m million she stole from her employer. The mum’s desperation for money saw her falsify invoices and fritter away the cash on betting sites and two caravan holiday homes.
Karen Brailsford took a whopping £1,653,672 from Urban Design and Development Ltd, a Derbyshire firm where she had worked for several years. However a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing at Derby Crown Court was told that financial investigators at Derbyshire Police discovered she has just £130,314.59 to her name, which will come from the sale of the items she still owns.
The 53-year-old appeared at the hearing via video link from prison, DerbyshireLive reports. She was told by Judge Shaun Smith KC: “Unless someone finds you have some more money like in another country this is the end of the process and you will have to sell those items to fund it.”
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Through the Proceeds of Crime Act, cash from criminal’s ill-gotten gains can be seized – and they can be forced to sell possessions in order to pay the cash back. In Brailsford’s case, she will have to sell her home, Mercedes car, personalised number plate and designer goods.
Seized cash is usually is split 50-50 between the police and the Government to fund community projects, however the judge ordered the £130,000 be paid as compensation to Brailsford’s former employer.
At her sentencing hearing last year, the court was told she’d taken money between March 2012 and February 2021 – taking £300,000 from the company in one year. The court heard that when her employer discovered the fraudulent activity, Brailsford claimed her actions were an error.
Phillip Plant, prosecuting, said the company directors were unsatisfied with her response, leading to Brailsford confessing she had been stealing from them “for some time”. The defendant later pleaded guilty to a single count of by abuse of position.
During the course of an investigation, police found she’d spent £298,867.36 on gambling. She’d also sent some money to her children and bought two holiday caravans. But Nicola Hornby, defending, noted that Brailsford, who had been suffering from depression, had “nothing to show for it,” adding: “This is not a case where there are substantial assets able to be identified”.
Recorder Tim Spruce jailed Brailsford, of Whitehall Road, Rotherham, for four years and eight months in prison, noting she had “expressed clear remorse for what has happened”.
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