Woman who embezzled £55,000 asked to pay back £1
A Sheriff has granted a confiscation order for the sum of £1 against a woman who used a Rangers Boys Club to launder £55,000 from the company she worked for.
A Sheriff has granted a confiscation order for the sum of £1 against a woman who used a Rangers Boys Club to launder £55,000 from the company she worked for.
Margaret Stewart, 49, who was in the accounts department of Ivanhoe Cambridge UK, a Canadian firm that used to own the St Enoch Centre in Glasgow, pocketed cash from her employers.
Over a three year period Stewart used cheques signed by bosses who believed they were going to legitimate payees, to take money.
Stewart, from Muir Street, Hamilton, pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to embezzling money between May 2008 and January 2011.
During a proof hearing at the court she explained that when her drug-dealing husband Delroy went to prison in 2003, she had to raise money to pay off debts he left behind.
Earlier sheriff Norman Ritchie QC said: "I will make the confiscation order as requested for the nominal sum of £1."
The court heard that if Stewart comes into more money in the future, the Crown can make an application to take more from her. Last year sheriff Linda Ruxton said the embezzlement was “deliberate and systematic” but said she accepted the “impact on her of her husband's criminal behaviour”. Instead of jailing Stewart, the sheriff imposed a community payback order with the condition that Stewart must carry out 260 hours unpaid work and a compensation order for £27,000. Stewart told the court she planned to repay the money using savings and a pension. At the time of the offence she was the Rangers Supporters Association Boys Club, that has seen likes of Barry Ferguson and Lee McCulloch come through the team before becoming professionals.
Stewart had bosses at Ivanhoe Cambridge sign cheques that were supposed to be used to make payments and would instead write over the payee name and insert the football team's name. The money would then go to the football club before Stewart took it.
But, her crimes came to light when a bank noticed a problem with one of the cheques and phoned her office.
The court heard that Stewart's husband was jailed in 2003 for three and a half years for drug dealing, leaving behind tens of thousands of pounds of debt.
Stewart said her husband was a bodybuilder that competed round the world and would often train at the gym four or five times a day and she was the breadwinner in the house. Her lawyer Bobby McCormack put to her: “Can I suggest you were being played along?”
Weeping in court, Stewart replied: “Very much so but I didn't know that at the time.”
She told the court that her house was raided during the night while her husband was out and she was alone with her two sons, and that she later learned he had been living a double life.
It was heard that when he went to prison she had people chasing her for debt he wracked up while living the high life, buying flats and cars and borrowing money.
Stewart then immediately confessed to her superiors what she had done and a payment plan was put in place for her to repay the money.
She told them she would sell her house to repay the cash but Japanese Knotweed rendered the house worthless.
The police were later contacted and she was reported.
The Rangers Supporters Association Boys Club was founded in 1960 for boys between five and 17 years old. It has seen many players over the years who have gone on to make it as professional footballers.
Barry Ferguson was scouted from the club and other players who have made it as professionals include Graham Dorrans and Charlie Miller.