There is no meaner crime than stealing money that has been collected for charity and perpetrators can expect both public condemnation and severe punishment. A pub landlady who pocketed cash raised by a public-spirited customer for a cancer support charity found that out to her cost.
The customer raised about £1,500 in sponsorship money by foregoing alcohol for a month. The cash was for some time kept in a glass behind the bar before being moved to the pub’s safe. The charity had no record of receiving the money and, following an investigation, it mounted a private prosecution against the landlady.
Following a trial, a jury was unconvinced by her defence that she had given the money to her ex-partner to pay into the charity’s bank account and that he had stolen it. She was convicted of theft and fraud and received suspended prison sentences totalling 22 months. She was additionally ordered to perform 100 hours of unpaid work and to pay a victim surcharge and £1,500 in compensation to the charity.
Dismissing her challenge to the convictions, the Court of Appeal could find no flaw in the trial judge’s summing up of the case to the jury, his rulings in respect of the admissibility of evidence or the fairness of the trial generally. The jury was sure that the landlady’s account was a fabrication and there was no other plausible explanation for the money’s disappearance other than that she had stolen it.