Cannock conwoman pays back £85k she embezzled from firm
A Cannock based business which was conned out of more than £85,000 by a former worker has finally been repaid all of the money following an eight-year wait.
Wheel Solutions Limited had to make redundancies after accounts clerk Jeanette Ball swindled them out of the fortune during a 12 month period.
The 54-year-old, formally of Charterfield Drive in Heath Hayes, was jailed for 14 months in 2007 for theft and money laundering but did not have the cash to pay back the £85,761.48 in full, until now.
The following year the company, based in Upper Keys Business Park, Hednesford, which supplies wheels and tyres for trailers, tractors, caravans and mobile homes, was forced to shed a quarter of its workforce.
Owner Steve Budding blamed a run of bad luck, including the embezzlement, which forced him to re-finance the company to the tune of £230,000.
Today he said: "I have finally received a cheque for the remaining money I was owed and I am delighted.
"Although seeing Ball convicted went part of the way towards a satisfactory solution, I now feel, with the arrival of the cheque, that justice has really been done."
Ball had responsibility for making payments on behalf of the company but on two occasions between November 2005 and October 2006 essentially paid sums worth £75,979 in total into her own account.
She possessed a further £9,185 worth of criminal property.
When she was arrested the conwoman immediately paid back £16,000 but upon her conviction at Stafford Crown Court in 2007 it was deemed Ball only had enough assets to return a further £13,650.
It meant the small-sized company, which had a team at the time of around 30 people, remained more than £56,000 out of pocket and facing grave consequences.
Also suffering the effects of the credit crunch which badly hit the construction and leisure industries it supplied, the firm made redundancies and put the remainder of the workforce on a three-day week. That year, 2008, it also shut down for two weeks over Christmas.
However in 2013 Staffordshire Police reviewed the case and in October last year the court ruled that Ball could now afford to pay back the rest.
Mr Budding said: "I am very grateful to Staffordshire Police for re-examining the case as, without that decision, I would still have been more than fifty thousand pounds out of pocket because of the experience.
"Their persistence got me back all the money I was owed. I now feel that Ball has not got away with things and that she really has been punished."
