Employee who stole £1.9m for 'luxury lifestyle' jailed

A County Tyrone woman who stole £1.9m from her employers to fund her "luxury lifestyle" has been given a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

Julie McBrien, 47, of Screeby Road, Fivemiletown, committed 26 counts of fraud and money laundering over an eight-year period.

It was established she significantly breached the trust of her employers, Cookstown-based Northern Mouldings Limited.

The company is owned by Heron Brothers.

McBrien was in charge of finances but despite enjoying a good salary, she filtered cash from the company, bringing it to the verge of collapse.

Figures identified the expenditure sustained a luxury lifestyle in her lavish mansion.

This included £360,000 general expenditure; £356,000 property development; £311,000 interior design; £231,000 fashion and beauty and £145,000 on jewellery.

McBrien made up false bank statements and forged the signature of a former employee after failing to remove his name from the bank mandate.

She then forged a bank mandate making her solely in charge of finances, countersigning cheques to herself and creating false invoices.

She also confided in a company director claiming to have a rare form of cancer.

This was exactly the same condition a close relative of the director had endured and he went out of his way to provide support for McBrien as his employee.

But there was no cancer and she continued to fund her lifestyle without interference from her employer.

When she was arrested she admitted the offences, initially claiming money was spent "just on holidays" adding "there's nothing to show for it".

She blamed the company accountants for "not doing their job properly. If they had, I wouldn't be here".

McBrien appeared in the dock of Dungannon Crown Court dressed entirely in black and kept her head down, weeping throughout her sentencing.

Judge Brian Sherrard QC noted the company placed total trust in her which had been significantly abused.

"Dedicated colleagues faced huge financial impact while you enjoyed your luxury lifestyle," the judge said.

"You were given preferential treatment by a director after claiming to have cancer.

"You were the author of that lie and benefited from it.

"You had no consideration for anyone affected by you."

McBrien's lawyers had argued for a lifetime anonymity order as she was threatening to self-harm if her identity was published.

Despite pleading guilty to all charges two years ago, her lawyers sought reports from numerous experts to have her sent to hospital as opposed to jail.

Having received clarification, the judge said he was confident Hydebank Women's Prison could properly manage McBrien's condition and imposed a prison sentence of five-and-a-half years.

A spokesperson for Northern Mouldings Ltd said McBrien had carried out "a major sophisticated and sustained fraud against the company".

"We believe today's punishment befits her crimes and we hope it will act as a lesson to her and to any others who may in the future try to abuse and exploit the most basic of human traits - trust.

"Her actions and the subsequent long running legal process has been exceptionally difficult for the business, the shareholders, our loyal staff and all their families."

The company said it will continue to pursue legal actions to retrieve the funds.

"We now look forward to putting this distressing incident behind us and instead focusing all our energies and efforts on continuing to grow our business for our employees and customers' benefit," the spokesperson added.