A payroll officer at Carnival UK has been jailed for 38 months after ripping off the cruise company up to £200,000.
According to reports in the Southern Daily Echo, Jacqueline Bowles, 60, had conned her way into a job at Carnival’s Southampton offices by lying in her application.
She had failed to declare a series of convictions, including theft as an employee and deception, and a previous three-year prison sentence.
Within four months of starting her job as a payroll officer with P&O Cruises and Cunard, she began changing details of staff who had left the company, creating false bank accounts into which their wages were paid.
Between February 2007 and April 2012, she managed to take around £78,000.
During this time, she also received more than £100,000 in wages and a payment of more than £7,000 after being made redundant.
The scam only came to light after Bowles left the company when a former member of staff contacted Carnival over his P45 and the false payments were discovered.
A spokesman for P&O Cruises said: “The fraud was detected due to the diligence of the current team and following a thorough internal investigation we have put in place various additional safeguards to prevent any further breaches of this kind.”
