You can't buy your way out of prison, crooked bank manager is told

Published on Monday 19 October 2009 21:57

A FORMER bank manager sobbed in the dock yesterday as she was jailed for 13 months after pocketing £22,290 from her customers.

Lloyds TSB manager Susan Burnett swindled the cash from elderly account holders to pay off her own debts.

She was caught when the pensioners noticed large sums disappearing from their bank balances.

Burnett, 40, tried to avoid a jail term by selling her house to pay back the money, Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told.

But Sheriff Derrick McIntyre told her: "You can't buy yourself out of a custodial sentence."

He said he had to "acknowledge the public interest" ahead of her own regret and remorse.

Burnett, from Dalgety Bay in Fife, managed Lloyds TSB branches in Edinburgh and Fife towards the end of her 18-year spell with the bank.

The court heard how she targeted one specific customer, a woman in her sixties, by telling her she could help sort her finances out.

Instead, Burnett made two loan applications in the woman's name for a total of 7,400 and diverted the cash into her own bank account.

A police investigation found that Burnett had already illegally transferred a further 11,390 from the same woman's account.

Officers were then contacted by another elderly woman whose account had been plundered of 3,500.

At an earlier hearing, fiscal depute Aidan Higgins said: "Suspicion fell on the accused that she, as manager of the Haymarket branch of Lloyds TSB, had diverted funds from the woman's account to accounts either in her name or others to which she had access."

Burnett was called in to an internal "fact-finding interview" with her bosses in November 2006, and admitted taking the cash.

Mr Higgins said a relative of Burnett had paid cheques into the accounts of her victims as "repayment" for her actions, each for the exact amount taken.

However, she was detained by police in August last year and appeared in court in June on embezzlement and fraud charges, which she admitted in August.

Burnett's defence agent Angus McLennan said: "She worked with the bank for many years and had been promoted within the bank to this position of trust.

"She rose through the ranks, but she had mounting debt problems by living above her means. There had been an element of sticking her head in the sand."

Mr McIntyre asked: "Why didn't she get a loan from the bank? If a bank manager can't get a loan then who can?"

Mr McLennan claimed Burnett should not have been jailed as she had already suffered.

But Sheriff McIntyre said he had "no option" but to jail her.