A Dundee woman who defrauded her bosses out of £15,000 in a scheme to gain loans for bad credit customers has avoided jail.
Jacqueline Mulligan, of Turriff Place, admitted forming a scheme to obtain money by creating false loan agreements for people who had been refused loans.
While not benefitting directly, Mulligan received commission and bonuses for introducing new firms to Shopacheck Financial Services.
The 55-year-old’s scheme was only discovered after 18 months when management launch an investigation.
Depute fiscal Marie Irvine said midway through 2013, Mulligan had 69 individual customers of which 24 were described as “quality”, meaning they paid regularly and in full.
But after just two-and-a-half months of 2014, she had more than doubled her customer list. Management became concerned at the high number of loans issued, the high level of customers belonging to the accused and the number of the loans issued to the same customers.
She said the firm carried out a review and discovered a substantial amount of new customers.
An internal probe showed she was using names and addresses of people she knew, allowing her the authority to issue a new loan for a customer who had already been refused one.
On average, Mulligan would collect around £2,000 per week in payments but that figure dropped notably.
Solicitor Ross Bennett said Mulligan had made no financial gain from the loan application other than to receive commission and performance bonuses.
Mulligan admitted that between November 30 2012 and March 8 2014, while engaged as an agent for Shopacheck Financial Services, Prospect House, Gemini Crescent, she carried out credit searches on known customers and fictitious customers, obtained unsolicited loans in the names of these customers and was instrumental in the forgery of their signatures on corresponding loan agreements, presented and cashed cheques issued for the loans and appropriated £15,000 by fraud.
Sheriff John Rafferty told Mulligan: “This was a fraud over a substantial period of time and you had ample opportunity to withdraw yourself, however you didn’t.”
He ordered her to complete 200 hours unpaid work as an alternative to custody.
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