Secretary used bank's petty cash to fund travels

A City secretary was spared jail after exploiting a "culture of lacklustre accounting" at the investment bank JP Morgan to fund a globetrotting lifestyle.

Nicola Fielding, 26, paid for trips around the world using thousands of euros brought back unused by executives from business trips to Italy. The court heard that while she began stealing to pay off debts, she found it "too easy" to continue and began spending the money on trips with her boyfriend. Fielding, originally from New Zealand, wept as she was handed a 51-week suspended sentence at the Old Bailey and branded a "disgrace" by the judge.

The court heard that she had admitted stealing £17,680 from JP Morgan, where she worked between May 2006 and April 2007.

Fielding, of Shepherds Bush, west London, was earning about £400 a week, but it was not enough to cover debts that she and her boyfriend had incurred since coming to Britain.

At JP Morgan she was put in charge of expense claims for the Italian sales team and of providing petty cash for their trips abroad, when executives would be given €500 (£340) for taxis, gifts and other expenses.

"When euros were returned to her, rather than putting them back she had taken them herself to a bureau de change in Oxford Circus and approximately twice a month put the money into her own account," said John Hulme, for the prosecution. Her employers became concerned about "certain anomalies" and she was arrested, immediately confessing to the fraud.

Sarah Clark, for the defence, said part of the reason for the theft was the atmosphere in which she worked and the pressure she was under. "This course of conduct didn't begin through greed. It may be that subsequently it was a little too easy," she added. "It seems there was a culture of slightly lacklustre accounting in general, which not only made it easy but meant it didn't stand out as much as perhaps it would have done at another organisation."

Fielding used the cash to pay for a string of holidays with her boyfriend in Turkey, New York, the Netherlands, Scotland and Ireland over a nine-month period. But Ms Clark said she was a "hard working young lady" who had never been in trouble before and the impact of the loss on the firm was "negligible".

Judge Peter Beaumont, the Recorder of London, ordered Fielding to complete 100 hours of unpaid work and pay back £2,500. He said while the amount may seem like a token, it would remind her of "the disgrace you have brought upon yourself and your family".