A Stockport employee from hell who stole around £30,000 from his company has been handed a 20-month jail sentence today after pleading guilty to abusing his position of trust.
Simeon Payne, 53, of Dorset Avenue in Adswood, was sentenced at Manchester Crown court after he was arrested on November 9 last year.
Payne was found out after his bank alerted his employer, The Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors (CICES), to a possible fraudulent cheque, when using a joint account with his wife, Payne attempted to cash the cheque worth £3,708.66 on October 26.
Over five years, Payne wrote 35 cheques to scam nearly £29,000 from his employer without their knowledge.
He also stole around £800 from petty cash during that time and around £600 was stolen when he lied about paying off a loan given to him by the organisation.
PC Paul Taylor from the Volume Fraud Team said: “Payne abused his position in the organisation as an administration manager to steal money from them over several years. He was a trusted member of staff and he was expected to safeguard the financial interests of the organisation.
“It was only when the bank alerted them that they realised the extent of his dishonesty and the amount of money he had taken.”
Payne amended the dates and amounts of genuine invoices before raising cheques to pay for them.
He would use erasable ink on the cheques so that after they had been signed by senior management he could change the name in the ‘pay to’ line to himself.
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