Fraudulent Use of a Debit Card by an Employee

A Debit Card that had been reported as "lost or stolen" was used on 60 occasions in the same Convenience Store over a period of a few months. On each occasion the fraudulent transaction was for a purchase of a small bar of chocolate, or a similar low value item, followed by a cash-back of £50.00

The Defendant, who was an employee at the store, was Indicted on 8 Counts of theft with the remaining 52 to be taken into consideration for sentencing if she was found guilty.

The Crown exhibited sections of the transaction log from the Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS) system and 4 extracts of CCTV. There was a potentially serious time discrepancy between the EPoS transaction logs and the CCTV but I was able to explain that this was because the clocks had gone forward part-way through the period. The EPoS clock was changed automatically from Head Office but nobody had thought to change the CCTV clock.

What became very significant was not the 4 extracts of CCTV that we had but the fact that there was no CCTV evidence in respect of either the remaining 4 Counts or any of the TICs despite some of these occurring within the same time period.

My Report highlighted the absence of this vital evidence.

The Defendant pleaded guilty to the 4 transactions and the Crown dropped the remaining 56.