Woman who defrauded employers ordered to pay back more than £700,000

A woman who defrauded her employers of more than £1.7 million has been ordered to repay in excess of £700,000 of her remaining gains following an investigation by the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU).

Tracey Stevenson, 54, from Arlington Way, Thetford, Norfolk, was instructed to pay back £786,766.38 to her former employers based in Newmarket, at the conclusion of confiscation proceedings at Cambridge Crown Court on Friday (11 August).

Stevenson had earlier been found guilty by the same court of a number of counts of fraud by abuse of position, having fraudulently diverted in excess of £1.7 million from the company’s bank accounts, which she used to fund her lifestyle, as well as an addiction to online gaming.

Stevenson had been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment at the earlier hearing in July 2016. As a results of the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) Confiscation Order, it was directed that the hundreds of thousands of pounds must be paid within three months. Should the order not be met, Stevenson would be made to serve a further six years’ imprisonment on top of her original sentence.

Detective Chief Inspector Liz Fernandes, from ERSOU’s Regional Economic Crime Unit, said: “This confiscation order made by the court brings to a conclusion an investigation conducted by our specialist Financial Investigators, alongside our colleagues in Cambridgeshire Constabulary.

“We are immensely satisfied with this outcome to what has been a complex investigation, and has ensured that the defendant in this case has been stripped of the profit she had made from her crime. In addition the company, who had fallen victim to her offending, has been compensated as a consequence, and the case goes to show that crime certainly does not pay.”