Woman escapes jail after stealing £7,000 from charity as judge says he will be criticised for sentence

Imposing a nine month sentence on Tina McMillan at Lisburn Magistrates Court, Dep. District Judge Chris Holmes told the 60-year-old he was suspending it for three years on foot of her guilty plea, restitution being made and because the guideline case directed as much.

“The last time I sentenced someone in your position I was pilloried in the press for about six months,” said the judge who told McMillan, “that’s not going to affect how I deal with you today but what it does show is the depth of feeling in the NI community for people who commit this type of offending as there was outrage.”

Imposing the suspended jail sentence, the judge told McMillan “your behaviour was atrocious, you stole from a charity and you richly deserve to go to prison, simple as that.”

“As I have said, I have no doubt I will be subject to significant criticism by the community because I’m not going to send you to immediate custody, something you richly deserve,” Judge Holmes told McMillan.

At an earlier hearing McMillan, from Westway Gardens, admitted two charges of fraud by abuse of position that between 17 November 2022 and 5 December 2023, she abused her position of trust with the Lagan Valley Rural Transport to defraud the charity.

In court today a prosecuting lawyer outlined how the charity chairperson was checking through the bank accounts in December when he spotted a payment of £95 to Amazon for goods bought by McMillan who was in a managerial role at the charity.

When McMillan was spoken to “she immediately reimbursed the charity” and claimed it had been a mistake in the the payment had defaulted to the LVRT account instead of her own.

“On the back of that the chairperson conducted further checks and found a further 11 transactions to Amazon and he suspected that these transactions were not for the benefit of the charity,” the court was told.

While those transactions amounted to £420, the chairperson dug a little deeper and found a further 13 transactions and transfers totalling £5,871 between the charity’s bank account and that of the defendant.

He also discovered six different invoices for different companies having gone to the LVRT’s office - he contacted those companies and found they had no record of the bills.

“The defendant, as a result of all this, was suspended pending further enquiries but the chairperson got an email from the defendant on 19 December accepting full responsibility fir the transactions which amounted to £6,840,” said the prosecutor.

The following a month an audit uncovered a further 12 suspect transactions of just over £900 but the court heard the charity could not prove they had come about as a result of McMillan’s actions and she had denied they were her responsibility.

Her defence lawyer said McMillan accepted fully that “it is clearly a very serious matter and there’s a breach of trust aspect to it” and he conceded that “obviously it’s shameful behaviour.”

He told the court it was clear from the pre-sentence report that McMillan is a “troubled lady” and although that does not excuse the fraud it doesn’t put a context to it.

The lawyer also revealed that McMillan had been “door stepped” by local media, something which had brought about “very public shaming…and that has been difficult for her to deal with.”

He emphasised however that along with a clear record, McMillan had managed to make full restitution for the monies she swindled from the charity and declared “I can say with some confidence that we won’t see her back in court again.”

Imposing the suspended prison sentence, Judge Holmes told McMillan “you have a significant conviction for a nasty theft - no one will trust you again and you did that to yourself.”