A convicted fraudster who boasted that she made ‘easy money’ stealing from Lord Timpson’s prison reform charity has been jailed.
Samantha O’Sullivan was sentenced to more than three years for stealing over £307,000 from the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) after the charity, which prides itself in offering second chances, knowingly employed the convicted fraudster as head of finance and human resources.
The organisation, which was then run by Lord Timpson before he became prisons minister, failed to notice missing money within weeks of promoting O’Sullivan, who duped bosses into signing off 171 fraudulent invoices and expenses so she could jet around the globe on holiday.
Kingston Crown Court heard yesterday that the single mother lived an ‘opulent lifestyle’ for seven years, splashing out on five-star holidays to destinations including Cape Verde, Dubai, Lisbon, Barcelona and Split with the stolen cash.
Samantha O’Sullivan was sentenced to more than three years for stealing over £307,000 from the Prison Reform Trust
She plundered charity donations to pay for hotel stays, beauty salon treatments, designer clothes and rental properties.
Meanwhile, the 57-year-old was celebrated by the charity as the very model of a reformed prisoner after claiming she had turned her life around.
O’Sullivan had previously been jailed for theft in December 2013 after she preyed on the destitute during her role as deputy official receiver of Croydon, responsible for managing bankruptcy assets in the region.
The then-civil servant stole £85,000 from those facing bankruptcy who had to sell their homes to pay back their debt, not knowing she was secretly pocketing their cheques under the counter to pay for lavish holidays.
Lord Timpson ran the charity at the time, before becoming prisons minister
Kingston Crown Court heard that the single mother lived an ‘opulent lifestyle’ for seven years
After her release from a year-long sentence, O’Sullivan got a job at the PRT in 2016 which had been prepared to overlook her conviction when it was portrayed as a one-off mistake in an otherwise unblemished 20-year financial career.
Prosecutor Edward Franklin said O’Sullivan effectively almost doubled her salary by getting a total of 171 fraudulent invoices and fake expense claims paid into her bank accounts, which were signed off by unsuspecting bosses at a rate of one every other week.
O’Sullivan duped Lord Timpson and trustees, including former Justice Secretary David Gauke and ex-Prisons and Probation Ombudsman Nigel Newcomen who were responsible for ‘taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud’, according to charity records.
When she was eventually caught in an internal audit last year, O’Sullivan claimed it was ‘easy money’, according to a pre-sentence report.
But yesterday she denied this, claiming she had only admitted the fraud was not sophisticated.
Apologising for her ‘horrible secret’, she said: ‘I’m ashamed and remorseful for what I have done.’
O’Sullivan told the court she had been open about her past when she was employed, but found her role in the spotlight ‘difficult’.
She said: ‘They gave me a chance and I did not set out to betray that trust that was given to me.
‘I found the work was difficult, some people resented me, I was often under the spotlight as a reformed prisoner.
‘I made terrible decision after terrible decision by somehow thinking I could make up for past mistakes by making new ones.’
O’Sullivan claimed some of the cash was blown on her children’s student rent, but when asked where the money had gone, she answered: ‘I do not know.’
Jailing her for three years and eight months, Judge Simon Heptonstall said O’Sullivan had a significant detrimental effect on the charity, with the missing money adding up to more than the organisation received in gifts and donations last year.
‘These were treats for yourself and others, you took money away from a deserving charity,’ he told O’Sullivan.
‘It became a habit. You recognised it was something that was easy to do.’
Pia Sinha, chief executive of the PRT, said: ‘Miss O’Sullivan’s actions represent an egregious breach of trust, which has been reflected in the sentence handed down today.
‘Over the course of eight years, Miss O’Sullivan deliberately set out to defraud the charity of its funds, stealing money that was intended to support the 88,000 people in prison we serve.
‘PRT has also reflected on the lessons it needs to learn from this sad episode. We continue to believe in giving people second chances, but this must always be done responsibly and with appropriate safeguards in place.’
