Employee Theft Through Accepting Post/deposits & Company Image Ruin?

[LittleSquidge]

Someone has been employed in a trusted role to accept post and take deposits for storage units.

They have kept several of the deposits (£750 and £900 each - known) and been signing for the post and then selling the items on eBay (£450 each, roughly 20 stolen, 10 listed) instead of placing them in their secure units or placing them into the company's own store.

Obviously theft has occurred, but this company has lost trust with clients and possibly the clients themselves, not to mention abusing their responsibility.

The theft (roughly): £11,000+
They have a possible previous suspended sentence for theft through abuse of position.

What are the names for the other crimes and does anyone have any idea what the punishment for this will roughly be?
This is UK based.

Thank you in advance.

[Nibble]

I would suggest that Consequential Loss is something to be considered, and is often added as an insured risk in business policies - it covers loss of income if an insured event arises, when the company can't trade. If it can demonstrate loss of income as a result of this employee's criminal offence, it might well cover that too. The company needs to check its business insurance policy.

[LittleSquidge]

Thank you Nibble.

Any ideas on the punishment received for this if it's a first crime or if they've received a previous suspended sentence (I assume this sentence has taken it's course)?

[FredPuli43]

It's theft in all instances, both of the monies that should have been accounted for and which they kept, and of the goods they sold.

There also seems to be false accounting (section 17 of the Theft Act 1968) in that they kept a false record that items had been received and put into store, or that they omitted items received from a list in a required record, when in fact they'd taken them and they were not in store at all, and in recording monies as with their employers when the monies were anything but. However I can't see the CPS bothering with that if they have theft counts clearly provable; false accounting is relied on when it is not clear who has been stealing or whether there's been any theft at all.( An employee might falsify records because he wants to keep his job, by hiding his own incompetence, without any theft occurring at all).

This should mean jail in all cases, because it's a theft by people in a position of trust,plus the suspended sentence (s) activated on top of any other term, assuming that the offender is in breach of the order by committing these offences during the period of suspension.

How long for depends very much on what role each defendant played, previous record, any other mitigating circumstances.

[Orderlimit]

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/theft_breach_of_trust/

[LittleSquidge]

Thank you everyone!