A woman who embezzled more than £72,000 from the north-east firm that supplies food to the Royal Family has avoided a prison sentence.
Michelle Wilson scammed the huge sum of money from Donald Russell Ltd while working there as a customer service team leader.
The 48-year-old – who had worked at the Inverurie firm for 12 years – cheated her employer by issuing more than 350 fake refunds to three bank cards belonging to her, Aberdeen Sheriff Court heard.
Despite being told that Wilson was unable to repay a penny of her ill-gotten gains, Sheriff Christine McCrossan said she “did not think it was appropriate” to send her to prison.
Speaking to the Press and Journal following the sentence, a spokeswoman for Donald Russell Ltd – which has held the Royal Warrant for four decades – said Wilson had “abused” the trust of the firm
At the time of the offence, Wilson’s job was to resolve customer queries and complaints, as well as dealing with matters where refunds were required.
She was authorised to make these types of payments, with every transaction creating a ‘credit memo’ and a ‘reason code’ in order to identify the transaction.
On March 6 last year, another employee at the firm was carrying out her work when she saw one of the credit memos was missing a reason code.
As she reviewed the transaction she became confused as to why the refund had been issued.
She then searched the system for the bank card connected to the refund and found it was linked to multiple customer accounts.
The same employee also saw that Wilson’s employee login was linked to all these suspicious transactions and reported the matter to her line manager.
Investigation launched
An internal investigation was then carried out, where all suspicious transactions were reviewed and audited.
It was found that between February 1 2019 and March 4 2023, Wilson had made more than 350 payments to bank accounts in her name.
They were disguised as refunds and totalled £72,307.56.
Following a disciplinary meeting, Wilson was sacked.
She then sent a letter to Donald Rusell Ltd apologising repeatedly and stating that she had been suffering from personal difficulties at the time.
Wilson also stated that she would be taking full responsibility for her actions.
When police arrived at her home to carry out a search, Wilson voluntarily handed over the bank cards connected to the offence.
In the dock, Wilson, of Canal View, Port Elphinstone, pleaded guilty to one charge of embezzlement.
Wilson avoid prison thanks to family
Defence solicitor David Sutherland started to tell the court about his client’s difficulties but was interrupted by Sheriff McCrossan, who commented that a prison sentence would not be in the best interests of her family.
The sheriff said that while a custodial sentence had initially been at the “forefront” of the court’s mind she did not ultimately feel it was “appropriate” because of the “fallout” it would cause within the accused’s family.
Sheriff McCrossan added that she was aware “other people would be disappointed” with her decision, but that she had come to the decision due to Wilson’s “family responsibility”.
As an alternative to a prison sentence, Sheriff McCrossan made Wilson subject to a community payback order with supervision and ordered her to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.
She also made Wilson subject to a restriction of liberty order, meaning she would be restricted to her home address for nine months.
‘An isolated incident’
A spokeswoman for Donald Russell Ltd said: “Through the routine and robust practices and processes we have in place, an anomaly was identified and investigated leading to this conviction.
“In this instance, the position of trust held by Miss Wilson was abused and as such, we welcome this outcome.
“Miss Wilson is guilty of defrauding Donald Russell, but we can assure all our customers that the security of our systems make it impossible for anyone to access customers’ funds.
“All our colleagues that handle sales and financial transactions are subject to criminal record checks and our internal processes have been reviewed following this isolated incident.”
For all the latest court cases in Aberdeen as well as crime and breaking incidents, join our Facebook group.