Bank thief on the run for eight years jailed

A thieving bank worker spent 13 years as a free woman after stealing £33,500 while working as a Lloyds TSB cashier in South Staffordshire, a court was told.

Donna Ward moved house, fell in love, married and had three children while out of reach of the law. But the 42-year-old, now using her married name Beale, was finally caught and has now been sentenced to 20 months behind bars.

Beale was working in the Wombourne branch of the bank when she stole cash by setting up bogus loan accounts using the names and personal details of friends who knew nothing about the scam between November 1996 and August 1997.

She resigned in September 1997, a month after the fraud was discovered, and first appeared before magistrates to face charges over the matter the following year.

Prosecutor Mrs Kanwal Juss said 38 different hearings of the case were scheduled but she only attended three of those, the last of which was in September 2003.

The trail appeared to have gone cold until police called at her home in Nairn Road, Bloxwich, on an unrelated inquiry that is understood not to have involved Beale and stumbled on her past.

She was detained under an arrest warrant that was still in force after being issued on April 14, 2004 and appeared in court on May 17 before being remanded in custody to await sentence.

Christopher Loach, defending, claimed she had taken the money after being threatened by a former partner and had since repaid some of the missing cash. There was no court order for compensation.

Beale admitted theft and forgery.

Judge Rosalind Bush, sitting at Wolverhampton Crown Court, told her: "You went to considerable lengths to evade the consequences of your actions for 13 years."