Leicester accountant escapes jail sentence after £26k fraud

An accountant from Leicester has escaped jail after defrauding her employer, catering supplier Delifrance, of more than £26,000.

Emma Hoy joined the company, which has its UK headquarters in Wigston in 2012, as a financial accountant.

Leicester Crown Court heard that Hoy signed into her computer using the log-on name of a colleague in order to divert company payments totalling £26,680 into her own bank account over a period of three years.

Hoy also made up fictitious business names based on her partner’s surname and then got the payments countersigned by other employees who had no way of knowing the payees were invented, the court was told.

Hoy first came under suspicion last year over a payment of £930. The court was told that Hoy was “evasive” about the payment and subsequently deleted entries on her computer. An audit subsequently identified more payments to the same account.

Hoy pleaded guilty to fraud and was given a 12-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months and ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work at Leicester Crown Court.