Bookkeeper steels £2m form estate agency

Julian Kremer, a bookkeeper at Richard Worth in Workingham between 2008 and 2013 stole almost £2m from his estate agency to pay for his gambling. By forging emails from the bank to inflate the balance of his accounts, the 49-year old stayed in hotels, purchased a patch of land in Scotland, all whilst creaming off money for gambling. He continued for four and a half years, believing he would get the one big win which would enable him to pay back the money.

Kremer’s offences were only discovered in 2013, after there was no money left to pay the employees. At the Reading Crow court on Friday, the bookkeeper was sentenced to five years in jail, after admitting the £1.98m scam, described as “almost as bad as it gets” by the judge. Jane Davies, prosecuting, described Kremer as clever and calculating while the accounts revealed evidence of planning and covering up in the years he had stolen from Stephen Jones, managing director of Richard Worth Limited, Richard Worth Residential Lettings and Richard Worth Holdings.

She said: “On January 31 2013 Mr Kremer was confronted by Mr Jones. “He admitted he had taken the money and a police investigation started and a forensic account was employed.” The accounts show his salary varied from between £1,500 to £2,000 a month but all the other transactions is money that has been put into his account. Over a period of four and a half years it is just short of £2m”, where £630,300 had been spent on two internet gaming sites.

Jane Davies, prosecuting, outlined the impact the theft had on Mr Jones, who had known Kremer for 20 years, and the steps he had taken to save the residential arm of his business, which had enjoyed profits of £120,000 a year, and the jobs of his 18 staff.

She said: “He has been put under severe stress and pressure. Mr Jones had done whatever he could to minimise the financial ruin for the company, He negotiated with a competitor to buy his lettings business which allowed the recovery of most of the client money.

“Mr Jones had to deal with it with secrecy to maintain the reputation of the business.”

Mr Jones negotiated with the Inland Revenue but had to make five employees redundant. Miss Davies continued: “He has been put under a huge amount of stress. He has taken on £1m in debt personally and put his own property on the line to deal with it which was the bedrock of his retirement planning. “He doubts he will ever recover from financial disaster.”

Llewellyn Sellick, in mitigation, said Kremer had no money left and was living in rented accommodation in Plymouth. Despite the large sum of money that was taken, Mr Kremer has nothing. “He knows full well he has only himself to blame. He knows he has to take responsibility for what he did. The addiction to gambling took over his life.”

When Kremer was found he felt shame, remorse and horrendous guilt at how he had deceived his employers and realised the enormity of what he had done. The trouble was that Kremer kept on trying to get that “one big win” that would sort everything out. Recorder Martin Heslop QC described the theft as “sophisticated and at times extremely clever, involving fraud, misrepresentation and forgery

Addressing Kremer, who sobbed in the dock, he said: “It was about as big a case as one could imagine. A review of the expenditure shows you were using the money to enjoy a significant high level of living.

“It has had the effect of disaster on the personal lives and financial world of those people who were close to you and trusted you.”

He said the public should be aware of the impact of Kremer’s theft on Mr Jones, James Morris, the company secretary, Louise Durcan, accountant and Paul Hodgetts, the firm’s joint owner.