A Dundee scaffolding company is taking a former employee to court in a bid to claw back the £28,000 she swindled from it.
IAS Dundee Ltd has launched the civil action against former accounts manager Karen Cromar, who used the company credit card to finance shopping trips and paid money into her own bank accounts under the name of fictitious suppliers.
The 41-year-old was sentenced to carry out unpaid work and ordered by a sheriff to pay £5,000 compensation to IAS as a “gesture”, but it is understood that none of this money has been received by the firm. It hopes to have Cromar made bankrupt so it can recoup some of the money embezzled and a civil hearing will call at Dundee Sheriff Court on Tuesday.
The scaffolding firm’s legal representative Muir, Myles, Laverty will lodge a petition of sequestration as the first stage of a process that aims to have Cromar’s assets sold to pay back the money stolen.
Cromar previously admitted that, between July 13 2011 and July 23 2012, at IAS Dundee Ltd, Tom Johnstone Road and Lloyds TSB, Meadowside, while employed as office/accounts manager, she embezzled £28,347.41.
She had originally been charged with embezzling £54,903.41. However, that figure was reduced following a lengthy period of plea bargaining between the Crown and her solicitor.
The court heard in December that the embezzlement had caused a short-term cashflow problem and the company had only been saved by an injection of cash from owner Steve Reilly’s wife.
Following the conviction, Mr Reilly told the Courier: “This sentence is absolutely shocking the whole thing was disgusting from the start.
“I can’t believe she has only got to pay back £5,000. It’s ridiculous she should have gone to jail. She tried to destroy the company and she hasn’t shown any remorse at all.”