CK Supermarkets secretary stole £1m for family farm

A company secretary who stole almost £1m from a supermarket's accounts after her family's Carmarthenshire farm ran into difficulties has been jailed.

Susan Jones, 57, transferred the cash from CK Supermarkets' accounts where she had worked for 20 years to help out the farm in Llandeilo.

She was jailed for 45 months after pleading guilty to fraud at Swansea Crown Court on Friday.

Judge Peter Heywood described the theft as "staggering".

The court heard how the mother-of-four, who started working for the supermarket in 1994, handled all the company's accounts as her boss was "computer illiterate".

She started transferring the cash into her bank account in 2009 after her family farm ran into financial problems.

'Complex' case

Over a four-year period Jones stole £955,368, using it to pay off her mortgage and for agricultural supplies.

The theft was eventually spotted following an audit by an accountant.

Frank Phillips, prosecuting, said the police only became involved when she failed to pay back the cash.

Terence Woods, defending, said Jones's farm had been in her family for several generations and she was "desperate not to lose it".

After the verdict, Iwan Jenkins, from the Crown Prosecution Service, described the case as complex, saying Jones had been "using her own system to keep track of the false payments".

"There was a lot of documentary evidence to assess but we were able to demonstrate exactly what she had done, resulting in a guilty plea," he said.