A conniving con artist has been found guilty of stealing thousands of pounds from a car dealership just months after faking cancer to scam more than £14,000 pounds from her boyfriend.
Charlotte Roche dodged jail in England earlier this year despite defrauding a man she met on a dating site after convincing him she needed urgent private treatment for a growth on her ovaries.
Instead she planned to use some of his cash for plastic surgery.
And yesterday, Roche was found guilty of stealing more than £3,000 from John Clark BMW in Aberdeen after a three-day trial at the city’s sheriff court.
The 31-year-old, who is now unemployed, pocketed the cash during her five weeks working for the garage between November and December 2014.
The court heard that garage boss Raymond Henderson grew suspicious of the service assistant after she suddenly took ill with a ruptured abdominal ulcer on December 16 and was rushed to hospital – just after he was informed of missing customer payments.
A number of witnesses claimed to have handed over cash for garage services to a woman matching Roche’s description in the weeks before her hospitalisation.
However, the accounts department later found the cash and invoice slips were missing from the petty cash box – all of which should have been deposited in Roche’s name.
Mr Henderson eventually managed to get Roche, of Aberdeen, to confess, and convinced her to pay back £1,000.
But yesterday the cunning conwoman tried to blame Mr Henderson for ‘extorting’ money from her while she was seriously ill in hospital.
Giving evidence as the only defence witness, Roche said she felt pressured into giving Mr Henderson a false admission of guilt while she was under the influence of strong medication.
And she tried to claim she was being “framed” by colleagues, who had set her up.
She said: “He [Mr Henderson] asked me if I took it [the money].
“I told him I absolutely didn’t know what he was talking about.
“I said to Raymond, ‘what do you want me to say?’ Raymond came back with, ‘you took the money’.
“I asked him what he wanted to hear and that’s what he said he wanted.
“It’s the biggest regret of my life.”
But Sheriff Eric Brown did not find Roche’s evidence “credible or reliable” and convicted her of stealing the £3,119.28. She will be sentenced next month.
Background: Charlotte Roche
Charlotte Roche was spared jail earlier this year after being convicted of swindling her then boyfriend out of £14,000.
She met Matthew Pilgrim on dating website Plenty of Fish in April 2014.
She later told him that she had financial problems and that she was seeing a specialist over fears she had ovarian cancer.
Roche claimed she needed surgery to remove a growth and that she could avoid a six month wait for surgery on the NHS by paying to go private.
Feeling under pressure, Mr Pilgrim agreed to lend her the cash.
He went on to lend her more money for post-op care, but eventually he realised the relationship was over and that he had been duped.
Roche avoided jail but was given a six-month suspended sentence at Maidstone Crown Court in February this year.