Manager jailed for stealing £40,000 from solicitors

Janet Lorkin, 43, was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment at Leeds Crown Court for stealing the money from well-known solicitors Graham Stowe Bateson.

The court heard she had been originally employed at the firm as an office junior while still a teenager but had risen to the position of accounts manager where she was trusted implicitly. Since joining the firm as a young girl aged 17 when Graham Stowe personally employed her, she had worked for the company for 24 years

Prosecutor Mehran Nassiri said the defendant earned a decent salary of £29,000 and her husband, a practising solicitor, also contributed to a comfortable income for the pair.

But it was not enough for Lorkin of Abbeydale, The Oval, Leeds, who had got herself hopelessly into debt and who began using the company’s money in a doomed attempt to keep up the payments on a string of credit cards.

Mr Nassiri said: “She reported to the partners every working day and due to her expertise until they discovered her criminal activities they trusted her implicitly and held her in the highest regard.”

But her secret was uncovered in 2009 when she was dismissed by the firm and the matter referred to the police. Money had been stolen over a period of 21 months.

She admitted theft.

Reading Mr Stowe’s victim impact statement Mr Nassiri said: “I can’t adequately express the hurt and sense of betrayal as a consequence of this lady’s actions against myself and colleagues.”

In mitigation, Nicholas de la Poer, said: “There is not a lot I can say by way of mitigation in relation to the offending. A lady who until this offence was of good character.

But he said she had got herself into a “dreadful financial mess” and had seen dipping into company money as “the easy way out.” He said “significant sums” had been repaid. The episode had left her marriage in crisis, her health had suffered and she would never be able to work for a firm of solicitors again.

Judge Geoffrey Marson QC said: “You and your husband were earning good money.” But he said “it was your spending on items I suspect you didn’t really need or even want which led you to get into substantial debt.”