A personal assistant who stole almost £20,000 from her employer to buy jewellery and go on luxury holidays with her lover has been warned she could be jailed.
Nancie Clarke, 32, used her boss’s credit card to book first-class airline tickets to Los Angeles and expensive hotel breaks in London to woo her boyfriend, Cambridge Crown Court was told.
The court heard how Clarke, who is married, began stealing from Cambridge Display Technology shortly after arriving there as a temporary personal assistant in January.
Using the credit card of the then chief executive, and a card entrusted to her to clear bills, Clarke ran up huge debts by lavishing gifts on Mr Cox, including a £2,500 watch, designer clothing and suitcase sets.
On one shopping trip to London, she also bought jewellery from Tiffany’s and Harrods and stayed in a four-star hotel with Mr Cox.
She also raided the company’s air miles accounts to fly first-class to Los Angeles with him at a cost of £14,000.
When quizzed by police about the missing cash, Clarke claimed she had not done anything wrong, Sara Walker, prosecuting, told the court.
Miss Walker said: “She said she was not told she could not purchase things for herself. She said she intended to pay the money back.
“She said she had done a similar thing in Australia and paid back the money when she had credit.
“She accepted she had no authority to do what she did and did so to impress Mr Cox. She said: ‘No-one seemed to know about the air miles. They were just sitting there, so I thought I would use them’.” Clarke, who moved to England from Australia five years ago, pleaded guilty to theft from an employer.
James Earle, mitigating, said she had been unable to pay back the money, but her parents were planning to remortgage their home in Sydney to cover the missing cash.
He told the court Clarke’s mental health problem lay behind her offending.
He said: “She booked plane flights she never took – sometimes the flights would be crossing at the same time – it is irrational behaviour.” Adjourning the case for psychiatric reports, Recorder Ian Baker warned Clarke, who is now reconciled with her husband, that she could face jail and needed to sort out compensation for her employer.
He said: “It is entirely in your own interest to do something about compensation or returning to court with some more credible way of paying back the money.” She will be sentenced at Cambridge Crown Court on December 9.
