Motherwell Mum Embezzled £726,000 Charity Cash

A mum of three is behind bars after pocketing more than £726,000 from trusts that were set up to help charities. Susan McMahon, 34, exploited her position as assistant manager in the trust department of Grant Thornton UK. She falsified documents so her superiors would authorise cheques, believing the trustees had agreed the money would go to various beneficiaries including the Save the Children charity. She also took £4000 from a trust set up for three children. But instead of going where the trustee's planned, she pocketed the cash herself, transferring funds into accounts held by her and her husband. McMahon, from Motherwell, North Lanarkshire pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to embezzling £726,765 between May 2006 and May 2013. She was snared in April 2013 when one of the partners in the firm authorised a cheque for £15000 to be paid to the Sports University Scotland (SUS), an Aberdeen charity. But he became suspicious because he thought the project that the funds had been approved by the trustees did not fit with the purpose of the charity. He carried out checks on the Margaret Murdoch Trust that - Mrs McMahon claimed had authorised the payment - and discovered no such payment had been approved. Procurator fiscal depute Pauline Henderson said: "The trustees had not approved a £15,000 payment to 'SUS', the minutes he had been presented with by the accused suggesting that the Trustees had authorised a payment had been doctored and were quite different to the minutes held on the companies database. "And further, that the payee on the cheques made out to 'SUS' had been changed to the name of Susan McMahon." The court was told that of the 12 -15 Trusts administered by McMahon, six had had funds belonging to them fraudulently removed and paid out to her or her husband's accounts. The trusts that lost money were the Margaret Murdoch Charitable Trust, The Morrison Foundation, Mr J Anderson, Mrs J Anderson, Mrs JMC Smith and Adam Boyd. The Margaret Murdoch trust has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to a number of charities including Alzheimer's Research UK and Scottish Huntington's association. In relation to this trust, McMahon attended meetings and made notes which were sent to the chairman of the trustees for approval. She was responsible for writing out the cheques for the approved donations and presenting them with documents to be signed. Mrs Henderson said: "The accused induced the authorised signatories to sign the cheques, which were subsequently paid fraudulently into one of the accounts by amending or manipulating the supporting documents." The court heard she compiled a "fictitious list" of annual payments making it look as though payments had gone to genuine charities. She created bogus minutes and emails including one email claiming a £10,000 cheque was being paid to the Rosemary Scanlon Trust but it was later put in her account. Mrs Henderson added: "One on occasion the accused presented a record of a fictitious phone all to the approved signatory indicating that the trustees had approved a payment. "The payment was for £4000. The accounting records have been manipulated by the accused to reflect that the payee in this instance was the genuine charity 'Save the Children'. "However, it would appear that his was not the charity listed on the documentation or the cheque presented to the signatories and this payment was in fact made to the accused and paid into an account held in her maiden name." A total of £350,300 was embezzled from this trust alone. The Morrison Foundation had £298,225 taken from them by McMahon who looked after their cash in the same way as the other trust. She even created a fake email account and sent messages to herself claiming to be from the trustee and approving various payments to charities. McMahon embezzled £4000 from a trust that had been set up for three children. She showed bosses a fake email claiming to be from a colleague in the tax department that said a cheque should be approved for payment. Mrs Henderson said: "The accused exploited her position as the only member of staff within the trusts department and the trust placed in her by her employers. "And, deliberately manipulated Grant Thornton's processes and procedures to embezzle a cumulative total of £726,765 from these six trusts." The court heard no money has been repaid. Sheriff Alan Miller deferred sentence on McMahon until next month and remanded her in custody.