Waterlooville woman escapes jail due to terminal cancer diagnosis after stealing over £85,000 from a small business she worked for
A female finance boss who stole £150,000 from two companies has escaped jail because she has terminal breast cancer.
Mother of two Vicki Fortune, from Waterlooville, splashed out on a 'lavish lifestyle' including flights, holidays, and designer shoes with the funds she embezzled.
The 45-year-old was first convicted in 2021 of defrauding a family run architecture products firm she worked for, leaving its finances in such a bad state they had to lay staff off.
It was only then that a small business which had employed her previously looked into its accounts and found a gaping hole. Fortune pleaded guilty to one count of fraud by false representation at Portsmouth Crown Court.
However, she avoided jail after a judge was told she is suffering from terminal breast cancer and has a life expectancy of just three to five years.
Four years ago at the same court, Fortune was jailed for embezzling £65,000 from Architectural Louvre Products & Services, based in Havant.
At her latest hearing, Edward Fenner, prosecuting said that 'as a result of the publicity' around her case, former employer Netsearch checked its records and contacted police after discovering her fraud.
Mr Fenner said she worked as a financial controller for the company between April 2015 and June 2018, meaning she was responsible for the day to day control of the financial department. Mr Fenner said that “this was a position of some trust.”
She began defrauding the company in 2016, and over a year and a half she embezzled £85,389.10 by transferring money from the company to her own account.
The prosecutor said: "She would enter erroneous references to justify the payments and divert attention from herself."
The money transferred varied between just under £1,000 to over £2,000 at a time on a monthly basis. The last payment she made to herself was on May 11, 2018, the month before she left the company.
She then joined the architecture products firm as financial controller in 2018, and embezzled £64,553.34 from that company, the fraud that led to her being jailed four years ago.
Fortune was arrested again in May 2023 for the fraud she committed at the first company, at which point she claimed she had been under “a huge amount of stress’” and said she couldn’t remember what she had spent the money on.
The prosecutor said: “In her previous conviction there was evidence of a lavish lifestyle.”
The court heard that the profits of the small business she worked for were wiped out “almost entirely” by her actions. It would make £50,000 of profit in a good year, the court heard, and to this day it is ‘breaking even’ most years.
Defending, Jason Halsey told the court Fortune was previously treated for breast cancer in November 2023, but it came back and is ‘terminal’.
He added that the metastatic breast cancer had spread to her spine and liver, and she is on medication until the point is reached that she can only be offered palliative care. He said: “Her life expectancy is three to five years.”
Fortune cried in the dock as Mr Halsey spoke about her terminal diagnosis.
He told the judge that prison would “shorten her life expectancy - she will have no access to specialist treatment”, and she was due to start chemotherapy the afternoon of the day she was sentenced.
Fortune managed to get employment in ‘financial services’ after being released from prison for her previous offence, despite making full disclosures to employers about her criminal history.
She visibly struggled to walk out of the dock after she was handed her sentence.
Judge William Ashworth said when sentencing: “I’m not sending you to jail today, alright? The offence to which you pleaded guilty was a fraud and abuse of trust of £85,000. The starting point is three years in custody.
“You have one conviction for a like offence which post dated this matter and for which you served a sentence of 16 months in custody. Mr Halsey is quite right that in a normal series of events you would be put in immediate custody.”
He said that “one can only imagine the frustration and hours of worry and loss of employment suffered by the business back in 2015 to 2018”
However, Fortune’s terminal cancer diagnosis, coupled with the fact she had already served a custodial sentence and is caring for a severely autistic son, led the judge to sentence her to a community order of 12 months and 20 rehabilitation requirement days.
Judge Ashworth continued: “I’m not in any way minimising the impact suffered by the business, but it is part of this court’s abilities to look mercifully on people who have suffered significantly, who have made full admission to their wrongdoing.”
In 2021, Fortune was convicted for embezzling £65,000 from Architectural Louvre Products & Services, based in Havant. Fortune joined the family business as financial controller in 2018 and within a month was appointed company secretary.
The managing director of the firm told the court her fraud, carried out between 2018 and 2019, caused the business serious cash flow issues. It left the company so short of cash it could not pay staff or provide bonuses.
The company's finances going into the Covid-19 pandemic were so badly affected by her offending that it had to lay four people off. She paid back just £1 in 2022 because a judge found she had “no assets”.