Bradford gambling addict jailed over £77,000 VAT fraud
A gambling addict who submitted hundreds of fake invoices as part of a £77,000 fraud has been jailed.
Pauline Leeming, 40, manipulated accounts at a family firm as her addiction "spiralled out of control". She took out personal loans to cover her gambling debts, but when they became too great she began to submit fake invoices at work. Judge Jonathan Rose sentenced the mother-of-three from Bradford to 20 months in prison. He told her: "It's accepted by all it is your gambling addiction that drove you to this offending. However your offending represents a gross breach of trust. "You allowed this to continue and escalate and it was over a protracted period of time and it would have continued had you not been found out when accountants investigated more closely. "You have lost a great deal from your offending and I'm afraid you must now lose your liberty." Leeming was a director at Paul Smith Plasterers in Leeds where she submitted nearly 300 false invoices over a 16-month period. Between February 2016 and June 2017, she altered purchase invoices and created fictitious ones, leaving the firm with a £77,000 VAT liability. In July 2017, her husband Roy, who was also a director, discovered she had been stealing in order to fund her gambling habit. Leeming, of Church Street, Cullingworth, pleaded guilty at Bradford Crown Court to a VAT fraud offence, but the court heard a decision had been taken not to prosecute her for theft from the firm. Lydia Pearce, mitigating, said Leeming had been to counselling for her addiction to online gambling. Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk.