Scots gran jailed after embezzling £1.5 million from work to fund luxury lifestyle

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A Scots grandmother who embezzled more than £1.5 million from her employer's business was jailed for 40 months.Coleen Muirhead, 55, indulged in expensive holidays and bought cars and caravans after stealing the money over a six year period.A judge told Muirhead, today, Thursday, September 28, that having regard to the scale of the crime and the massive breach of trust only a prison sentence was appropriate.Lord Fairley told her she would have faced a five year jail term but it would be modified to three years and four months imprisonment following her guilty plea.

The judge said he had noted childhood trauma experienced by the first offender and mentioned in a background report prepared on her.She earlier admitted embezzling £1,524,192.37 while employed at Panda Rosa Metals, Canal Road, Aberdeen between June 2015 and October 2021.

As Muirhead's crime was uncovered she wrote to a colleague and said: "Police have just raided! So I will need a visitor in jail!

Please don't think the worst of me."When the colleague expressed confusion Muirhead responded: "Don't be I have taken the money am so sorry."Muirhead, of Farquhar Road, Aberdeen, a mother of four and grandmother to seven, admitted to police after her arrest that she was responsible for creating false accounts and stealing the money from the firm.