Crooked accounts boss may be jailed

Apr 16 2008 by Dan Warburton, The Journal

THE ACCOUNTS manager of a building company who swindled more than £200,000 from her employer in a seven-year fraud was yesterday told she is likely to face time behind bars.

Melanie Middleton admitted the theft of £205,0000 between January 2000 and December 2006 from Fossway Builders Merchants Ltd when she appeared at Newcastle Crown Court yesterday.

Middleton, 44, of Thorntons Close, Pelton, County Durham, also pleaded guilty to false accounting between the same dates.

She was further remanded on unconditional bail after the case was adjourned for a probation report at the request of her defence team.

Middleton will be sentenced in the week starting on May 6. But when he adjourned the case Judge David Hodson told her: “You must understand for amounts of this magnitude, imprisonment is virtually inevitable.”

Back at her home after the case, Middleton refused to comment.

She lives in a £125,000 property in the village near Durham.

On her drive is a BMW Cabriolet with a personalised registration plate. The car is valued at about £7,000.

A spokesman for Fossway Builders Merchants was unavailable for comment last night.

The company was recently bought for £4m by North East rival Thompson Building Centres. Fossway Builders has been trading for 20 years and has sites at Walker in Newcastle and Team Valley in Gateshead.

The deal, which Thompson had been trying to engineer for several years, brought two of the region’s best-known building supplies companies together.

Thompson, which already employs about 200 people in Wearside, South Tyneside and Durham, took on all 50 of Fossway’s staff.

It said it planned to expand its workforce north of the Tyne by 20 in the next six months.