Disgraced Leeds Girl Guides leaders swindled half-a-million pounds of public money
Devious Girl Guides leaders swindled more than £480,000 of Government funding and splashed the money on themselves, buying luxury items and clothing.
Sisters Jean and Sara Barnbrook, who ran three units of Girl Guides and Brownies in the Cross Gates area, submitted multiple false Gift Aid applications - a scheme that allows charities to claim an extra 25p for every £1 donated by a taxpayer.
The sneaky pair manipulated the system over a six-year period between 2013 and 2019 by falsely declaring that parents had generously donated almost £2 million, and as a result they received the £482,294.
They then siphoned the cash into their own accounts and splashed out on luxury items, hotels, clothing, travel, home improvements and paying off personal loans. They also withdrew thousands in cash, prosecutor Angus Macdonald told Leeds Crown Court this morning.
The pair then tried to blame a fictitious woman they conjured up to divert the blame.
Sara Barnbrook, 54, admitted a charge of cheating the public revenue between April 2013 and September 2019. Jean Barnbrook, 51, admitted a charge of entering into a money-laundering arrangement over the same period.
Both live on Laurel Terrace, Leeds, and have no previous convictions.
An investigation was launched in 2019 by HMRC after Jean had called her bank chasing up a Gift Aid payment they were expecting. A laptop belonging to Sara was seized and fraudulent Gift Aid forms and fictitious donors were found.
Mr Macdonald said their offending was “so brazen”, they even continued to claim money after the Girl Guides Units had closed down.
The money was paid into accounts under the Girl Guides units, which was then transferred to the sisters’ personal accounts, who were the signatories.
Once caught, they claimed a woman named Louise had written the sisters a letter, confessing to the theft. However, she was not traced and it was deemed the devious pair had simply “invented” her to shift responsibility.
Mitigating for Sara, Anastasis Tasou said she had worked for 30 years as a volunteer for the Girl Guides. He said the crimes began after their mother died, and she had a “desire to bring her standard of living up to one that most of us take for granted”.
He said that Sara still maintains a lot of the money was spent on the youngsters attending the Guides sessions.
For Jean, Glenn Parsons said she had suffered coercive control at the hands of a former partner and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Judge Mushtaq Khokhar accepted that the majority of the fraud was carried out by Sara, but said Jean was fully aware of the situation, so made “no distinction” between the pair.
He said that had they not been caught out, they would have continued in their deception.
He said: “This was fraud against the public purse, and when people commit these offences, they commit them out of greed. It was a sustained attack over a long period of time. It was greed.”
Judge Khokhar jailed Sara Barnbrook for three years, and Jean for 30 months.
Speaking afterwards, Vivienne Hartley, specialist prosecutor from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Whilst in position of trust at a well-known charity supporting young people, Jean and Sara Barnbrook were secretly defrauding hundreds of thousands of pounds out of the taxpayer.
“The CPS worked closely with HMRC to bring this complex case to court, demonstrating our commitment to tackling serious fraud and protecting systems designed to help charities.
“Our Proceeds of Crime specialists have started confiscation proceedings against the defendants to remove any available funds from this fraud against the public purse.”
Tim Atkins, of the Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC, added: “These sisters stole money that was supposed to support genuine charities and they used it to fund a lifestyle they could not legitimately afford.
“They used their position of trust to forge claims, and I hope these sentences serve as a warning to others that we can and do investigate abuse of the Gift Aid system. We will now work to recover the stolen proceeds of crime.