England: Colleagues lose their job because of a gambling addicted employee

A 63-year old woman created damage worth millions at her former place of work. The sprightly woman financed her habit with the money she stole. Last year she was then sentenced to several years in prison.

Moreover the court in St Albans in the South of England ruled that the addicted woman had to sell her house, to at least pay back part of the damage she had caused. The consequences of her criminal activity are however devastating. A large part of the money is till today still gone. Besides, several employees of the relevant company have lost their job and the company barely avoided liquidation. But how did a 63-year old woman manage to channel off such a large amount and use it to gamble in the land based and online casinos without anyone noticing?

2,24 million Euro still vanished

Joyce Baker was a finance employee at The Lightning Corporation for years. The medium-sized business operates in the field of light technology and in the past was actually quite successful. The problem began in 2012, when Baker carried out unauthorised transactions and therefore till 2018 she had embezzled more than two million GBP from her employer. Converted, that comes up to around 2,24 million Euro. Baker used a large part of the money to finance her gambling addiction. She not only gambled in online casinos but she also visited stationary casinos. The fraud begun way back, around six weeks after Baker first started her job in the company. One questions, why it took so many years till the brazen fraud leaked out and Baker was finally arrested.

Offender should sell own house

In the first trial in September 2019 the gambling addicted British woman was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison. Now she is expected to be released on probation already in 2022. After a new court decision, she then has six months to sell her house in the county of Herfortshire. Her employer should receive compensation from the proceeds of the house, however, one can already forecast that the sum will by far not be enough. An expert valued her property at around 375,000 GBP. However two million GBP are needed.

Should Baker not conclude the sale of the house out of her own freewill, she will face two years imprisonment. Her former employer suspects however, that the perpetrator has managed to put away part of the money. The perpetrator did not want to reply to these accusations in court however. The employer also believes that it took too long till the court ordered the sale of her house and ordered that the funds are used as compensation for damages.

30 employees of the former employer lost their job

This case is especially tragic, since because of it, 30 employees of the light technology firm lost their job because of the fraud which amounted to millions. For the company owner, David Caddick, the actual rendition of judgement is only conditionally satisfactorily. He had wished a quicker reaction from the courts. In his opinion this could at least have saved the jobs of the employees. The firm is nearly bankrupt because of the amounts in millions which the former employee has embezzled. He commented as follows: 

“The money from the sale of the house, had this been sold before, could have been used to secure the jobs, which we lost in the company, after we all suffered not only because of her criminal act, but also because of the pandemic.“

Should one sympathise with the gambling addicted woman?

The elderly British woman is criticised from all sides and rightly so. At the end of the day, the gambling addicted woman not only brought a middle-sized firm into a terrible financial situation, but she was also responsible for the job cuts of 30 people. For this reason, it would definitely be wrong to insist that the perpetrator has earned any kind of sympathy. It is certain however, that her gambling addiction is a serious illness, not to be taken lightly. Persons affected by this illness are not able to resist the “gambling impulse”. And this happens, even though the affected persons are aware of the serious consequences, both in their personal and professional lives. Should Joyce Baker have actually been a gambling addict, the criminal activities should at least be seen from another perspective.

Whilst giving evidence during the comprehensive investigative process, Baker admitted to the investigating authorities that she is a gambling addict. Moreover she admitted that on some nights she had gambled up to 4,000 GBP on the Internet. She was also a frequent and welcome guest in land-based casinos. On top of all this, she falsified the certificate of creditworthiness which is needed to be able to gamble with these amounts with the British online-providers and she also self-certified her income at a clearly much higher amount.

Conclusion

The example from Great Britain shows the devastating effects of a gambling addiction. In this case the 63-year old British woman has embezzled several million Euros from a business account and most probably used large parts of it to finance her addiction. It is questionable why the aggrieved company took six years to find out about the fraud. There seems to be the need for serious improvement of the control mechanisms here. Despite this, the actions of the gambling addicted British woman are criminal and are rightly so, harshly punished. One can only hope that the former finance employee has learnt from her grievous mistakes and will seek medical treatment for her gambling addiction.

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