A report Wednesday (5/30) on the BBC News site states, “A former finance director at the [London-based] Royal Academy of Music has been sentenced to 20 months in prison after defrauding the institution of £236,000. Janet Whitehouse, 56, admitted to three counts of fraud, including faking paperwork to boost her pension fund. She also submitted fake invoices for £104,000 for work she had invented. The judge at Southwark Crown Court said Whitehouse had abused her position over four years to benefit herself and family members. Prosecutor Antony Swift told the court Whitehouse had forged letters and invoices to take £100,000 in three lump sums for her pension, claiming it had been approved by the college chairman Lord Terence Burns. To prevent her frauds being discovered, she had asked another member of staff at the institution to destroy her pension file. However the employee kept copies of documents so the institution could reconstruct the payments made. … The fraud was discovered in February 2011 when ‘internal financial control systems identified apparent financial irregularities,’ the academy said.”
Posted May 31, 2012
