Thursday 12th November, 2015

A book-keeper from Godalming, Surrey who plundered £1.75 million from the coffers of a family-run environmental consultancy firm to fund a lavish lifestyle wept as she was jailed for five years.

Amanda Cox, funnelled company cash into her own bank accounts before spending thousands on high-speed custom racing cars.

The employee also blew £50,000 on a villa in Gran Canaria and ploughed yet more stolen cash into funding a lavish lifestyle of designer clothes, accessories and holidays.

Over seven years the mother-of-two came ‘close to destroying’ Hutton and Rostron, the company she had worked for, who specialise in environmentally friendly property restoration.

She used Tipp-Ex to fool auditors by wiping her tracks when they checked accounts. The fraud was uncovered following a police investigation.

She also failed to declare her previous convictions to her bosses at Hutton and Rostron. In May 2005 she attended court after defrauding a small solicitors’ firm who employed her out of more than £90,000 and she was also involved in a benefit fraud in 2008.

She then abused her position as the company’s bookkeeper between January 2008 and February 2015, bagging a total of £1,757,239.71.

David Jeremy QC said: "You wrote cheques and created false invoices to cover your tracks."

"You are greedy because you want a lifestyle your work wouldn’t have provided you with and so you have deceived, and come close to destroying, those who trusted you."