Warwickshire worker spared jail after stealing stock from her blind boss - and selling it on eBay

Emma Findley pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to stealing model cars, commemorative figures of sports stars and clothing from Priors Marston based e-collectable.com Ltd.

Findlay, aged 39, of Warwick Place, Leamington, was given a 15-week prison sentence suspended for 12 months and was ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid work and to pay £612.24 compensation to e-collectable.com.

The company is owned by blind businessman David Adams, who led the fight to save the village school when Warwickshire County Council withdrew funding in 1996 and is president of the European Guide Dogs Federation.

Prosecutor Scott Coughtrie said Mr Adams employed Findlay in September last year as a general sales assistant in the company which sells bronze commemorative sporting figures and die-cast model cars.

Findlay, who worked in the warehouse where she had access to all the goods they sold, promoted a website and set up an ebay account for the company.

During her time there she generally went home early, ostensibly to monitor online auction sites - but the company’s sales director noticed items going missing from the stock, with some of them occasionally being returned to the shelves.

By November 12, Findlay, who was paid about £400 a month, had submitted her resignation by email in which she indicated she was not owed anything.

Then in January, the sales director noticed a number of items being offered for sale on eBay and realised they matched unique items which had previously gone missing.

So she contacted the police who arrested Findlay at her home a few days later.

Items worth around £2,300 were recovered from her home, and records showed she had sold goods worth £612.24 through the online auction site, added Mr Coughtrie.

Sally Hancox, defending, conceded: “The individual who was running the company has a significant vulnerability.”

And Judge Richard Griffith-Jones commented: “What is so distressing is that, in Mr Adams, here is a man for whom it takes more courage than most people to go into business, and he needs to place special trust in those he employs.”

Miss Hancox said: “She has always indicated that although she accepts it was entirely wrong, this was not done to defraud, but to take what she believed was due to her.”

She accepted there had been ‘a great breach of trust’, but said there was a low risk of Findlay, who has now got a new job, committing such offences again.

Sentencing Findlay, Judge Griffith-Jones told her: “It is important that when a judge sentences somebody that he does not do so in anger.

“The public expect me to be professional and even-tempered; but I cannot help but appreciate the anger there would be in the public at large at this despicable dishonesty.

“You were given the chance of a job by a brave and enterprising disabled man who, by reason of his disability, has to place a special trust in those who are around him. His trust will have been damaged by your despicable dishonesty.”

After the hearing Mr Adams and his wife Judith, who sat in court with his guide dog during the hearing, said they were satisfied with the outcome.

Mr Adams had played a leading role in raising money to keep Priors Marston village school open after the county council withdrew funding in 1996 - and it was kept running with that public support until it became one of the first of the Government’s free schools in 2011. The businessman is a former chairman of the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford and current president of the European Guide Dog Federation.

And earlier this year he and his wife ran the Plymouth half-marathon to raise money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association in memory of their son Simon who lived in Plymouth where he died of the disease two years ago.