A solicitor imprisoned for her part in a fraud has been ordered to pay back thousands of pounds.
Kalvinder Garcha and her colleague Lynn Middleton were jailed last year after defrauding their employer, Oadby and Wigston Borough Council, and the Leicestershire charity Coping with Cancer out of more than £40,000.
Garcha, admitted as a solicitor in 2000, was head of corporate resources at the council and used her position to help Middleton create a ‘phantom employee’ and pocket their purported salary. The pair carried out a similar scam on the charity, where Garcha was chair and Middleton was on the board of trustees.
According to local media reports, Garcha was described by the sentencing judge as the ‘driving force’ behind the fraud who was an ‘arrogant and manipulative’ woman who got ‘a power kick’ from what she had done.
Garcha was jailed for two years and six months, with Middleton jailed for 18 months. On Friday, the solicitor was issued with a Proceeds of Crime Act order worth £7,880. At a previous hearing Middleton was issued with a POCA order of more than £53,000. She was also ordered to pay compensation to Oadby and Wigston Borough Council of more than £35,000 and the cancer charity just over £4,000. She was given three months to pay the money or face a further eight months in prison.
Councillor John Boyce, leader of Oadby and Wigston Borough Council, said: ‘We always felt it was important to first achieve justice in this case, and then to pursue the money lost as a result of this sophisticated fraud. The borough council – alongside the former named Coping with Cancer charity – were victims in this case and we’ve fought for a long time to get to this point.’
Garcha, 50, from Leicester, was employed by the council from 2006 until 2017. After leaving her post, she had initially brought employment tribunal claims for race discrimination, disability discrimination and unfair dismissal but later withdrew the claims.
