Edmonds Marshall McMahon, on behalf of a private lending company, brought a successful private prosecution against the defendant, Daniel Allen, for one offence of fraud by abuse of position contrary to section 1 of the Fraud Act 2006, and an offence of theft contrary to section 1 of the Theft Act 1968. The total amount obtained by Allen was over £50,000.
There was clear evidence that Mr Allen, during his employment as a self-employed agent had taken out loans from a private lending company by either colluding with third parties to use their identity to obtain the credit or by forging documents to steal the identity of others, and using all of the proceeds for his own use and benefit. In addition to this he stole thousands of pounds from the company that had contracted him as an agent on their behalf.
On the 13th April 2017, Mr Allen who had earlier pleaded guilty to both offences was sentenced at Cornwall Crown Court. HHJ Robert Linford stated that this was an instance of ‘deplorable offending’, which clearly passed the custody threshold; after hearing extreme mitigation on Mr Allen’s behalf, HHJ Linford stated that he would depart from the Sentencing Guidelines and would not send Mr Allen to prison, but he would impose the maximum sentence he could down from a custodial sentence. For the fraud, he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for two years but which would be suspended for two years. He was further ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work. For the theft he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for 8 months suspended for 2 years to run concurrently to the sentence he received for the fraud.
This case illustrates the attitude of the courts to instances of employee theft and frauds perpetuated by those that are in a position of trust.
