A SCOTS Thomas Cook employee embezzled £140,000 after discovering a computer loophole that allowed her to take as much cash as she wanted from the till at her shop without the firm being aware.
Alicia Morgan stole dollars, euros and UK currency from the branch at Intu Braehead, near Glasgow, over six months and treated herself to trips to Florida, New York, Las Vegas, Spain, Euro Disney and Lapland.
She did so by processing 140 currency transactions where nothing was received in return.
Morgan, 33, of Greenock, over-rode the computer so that the till balanced after each transaction, leaving the holiday firm's auditors unaware of the missing cash.
It was only when colleagues found $400 was missing she was rumbled.
Paisley Sheriff Court heard that when questioned by a work colleague, Moran claimed she had given them to a customer by mistake.
But the court heard her cash till later showed 1,200 euros had gone and on August 10 2015. Then a colleague found £1,000 in cash hidden in a safe under a pile of envelopes. There was no paper trail.
Fiscal depute Alan Parfery said another staff member told bosses to inform them Morgan had claimed the amount could be 'manually corrected' on the computer to prevent managers becoming aware of any money disappearing.
It resulted in a nationwide review of security at Thomas Cook stores which found the loophole. Moran appeared in court to admit embezzlement yesterday. She had originally been charged with taking more than £241,000.
Sheriff David Pender deferred sentence for social work reports.
A Thomas Cook spokeswoman said: "This was a significant breach of trust from one of our colleagues.
"We will not hesitate to bring charges against employees where there is evidence of dishonesty."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here