Swindling Leeds finance worker ordered £8,000 kitchen for his home using firm's funds

Finance worker Lee Collins tried to steal more than £20,000 from the firms, siphoning the funds from clients and using company money to buy items online. After being exposed and sacked from the first company, he then got a job with the second and continued to steal despite being on bail.

The 44-year-old dad denied any dishonesty, with both set of offences being taken to trial. He changed his pleas to guilty during both trials. He was jailed for 34 months at Leeds Crown Court this week.

Prosecutor John Batchelor said Collins had been working at Limewood Contracting Services based in Seacroft across 2018 and 2019, and part of his duty was to pay money to clients. In April 2019, he was off work sick when a client contacted the company to query a missing refund.

Following checks, the money was found to have been directed towards a NatWest account owned by Collins. A full investigation found further cash was being deposited into his account. It amounted to £7,593.

Having been suspended, he was invited to a disciplinary hearing which he failed to attend. He eventually attended a voluntary police interview, claiming he was owed the cash through overtime, which Limewood said was not true.

Released under investigation, Collins secured employment with Torsion Group as an accounts manager on a £30,000-a-year salary. During his time at the Thorpe Park company, he ordered a kitchen from Howdens worth £8,304, telling them it was for his director’s daughter after paying for it directly from company funds.

Collins also ordered £2,000 worth of items from Amazon with company money, and ordered 15 laptops from Dell to be delivered to the company and addressed to him. However, Mr Batchelor said they were “delivered on the wrong day” in October 2020, because he was not present to intercept the delivery. The total amount he stole from Torsion totalled £10,300. The laptops were worth an additional £9,900.

Investigated again, he admitted what he had done but denied any dishonesty. Overall, he eventually admitted three counts of fraud and one of attempted theft.

The court was told that he had previously been convicted in July 2019 of making false representation for misusing a company credit card. He received a 23-week sentence suspended for 12 months.

Mitigating, Christopher Morton said Collins, of Rookwood Road, Osmondthorpe, had been a respected member of the community but added: “In these cases there’s often a minimisation, but he accepts his own conduct."

References said he was a hard worker, taking on extra hours, while he also did charity work with children’s football.

Mr Morton said Collins had secured another job with a £40,000-a-year salary, and could pay the money back should he be given a suspended sentence.

But Judge Andrew Stubbs KC told Collins: “You abused the trust of your employers, exploiting your position to fund a lifestyle you could not afford. You tried to cover up by lying. You got away with whatever you could.”

Referring to his late change of guilty pleas, he added: "It’s a sickening waste of court resources, you were putting off your day of reckoning as long as possible.”