Accountant treated like a daughter repaid trust with fraud

An accountant who had been put through accountancy training by her employer stole millions from the group of companies for which she worked, mainly to fund a long-term gambling habit. Gemma Lewis stole £2.4 million from five different companies that were part of a group owned by James Davies, who looked on Lewis “as a daughter”.

Lewis began working for Davies in 2007 as a receptionist. However, by 2017, she became the accountant for the group having been trained at the company’s expense.

The fraud was first suspected when the group moved to an online banking system. For the first time, staff began to notice a substantial and unexplained downturn in profits, accompanied by an increase in third-party payments.

Presumably realising that she might be found out, Lewis resigned in 2023, and a new accountant took over. However, it was only when Lewis contacted her former employer about her severance pay that a link was spotted between Lewis’ account details and several other payments on the account.

It was proven in court that instead of paying third parties, she had been paying herself and disguising the payments as legitimate settlement of supplier invoices. This meant that companies, including Daisy Vale Limited and Fastnet Properties Limited, were left unpaid despite the accounting records having been manipulated to suggest that the liabilities had been settled. By the time the fraud was discovered, Lewis paid herself more than £3.6 million between 2018 and 2023, with the total misappropriated being more than £2.4 million after her salary of £200,000 per annum and other legitimate payments had been deducted.

Commenting on the case, Roger Isaacs, National Technical Director of NIFA said: “Fraud is not only expensive for its victims but it can also be emotionally traumatising to discover that the faith that has been put on those in positions of trust has been abused.  In this case, even supporting a receptionist to move up through the ranks of the group to reach a position that commanded an annual salary of £200,000, was not sufficient to earn Lewis’ loyalty.

When frauds like this are discovered, it is often appropriate to seek forensic accountancy advice, especially if claims are to be made against insurance fidelity policies where technical points about what is and what is not insured can have a large impact.”

Sources: Wales Online

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