Hotel cashier in 'fake staff' scam creamed off £108,000

Janet Davis, 48, a paymaster for the Caledonian Hotel in Lothian Road, Edinburgh, registered the false employees and paid their bogus wages into two of her own bank accounts over four and a half years between April 2000 and October 2004.

In the elaborate scheme, she falsified paperwork, signatures and even invented time sheets.

A financial auditor became suspicious when she noticed that ten different so-called Hilton Group employees were having their wages paid into only two bank accounts.

She realised that all the signatures were in the same handwriting and that some of the payment forms were incomplete.

"Mrs Davis was asked for an explanation," the procurator-fiscal depute Lucy Proctor told Edinburgh Sheriff Court. "She could not provide one."

Davis, of Kirkfield View, Livingston, West Lothian, telephoned the hotel saying she would not go back to work and admitted the scheme.

"She outlined exactly how she had carried out the fraud and said it had gone on for between four and five years," Ms Proctor said. "She could not say how much she had obtained and was formally dismissed. She freely admitted to police that she has falsified paperwork, made up fictitious employees and time sheets. She showed great remorse throughout the dealings with the police."

Davis told officers that she had mounted up debts when her husband was laid off. The cash had not been spent on valuable items and there was none left, she said. She has repaid 1,400 and saved another 2,000, but says she cannot afford any more than that at the moment.

Ms Proctor said that after more than 24,000 tax was deducted, Davis had embezzled 83,703.

Sentence was deferred until next month.

A spokesperson from Hilton hotels, the group that owns the Caledonian, said: "The hotel reviewed its payroll process and we are looking to restrict such incidents in the future."