Man jailed for defrauding charity of £250,000

A 47 year-old man is back behind bars for defrauding a second charity of thousands of pounds.

Scott Golding was sentenced to four years and eight months imprisonment for defrauding charity Article 25 of £260,479.27 over a period of 18 months.

He was previously jailed for six months in April 2013 after he stole £9,500 from Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Appeal, which fundraises for Bristol’s Children’s Hospital.

Golding was employed by Article 25, a Canary Wharf-based charity that manages sustainable architecture projects in areas of extreme poverty and disaster.

He was taken on to look after their accounts in November 2013.

Over the next year and a half, he siphoned money out of the charity’s bank account into his own, using it for his own personal gain including paying rent on his property.

Throughout this period Golding presented fictitious accounts to senior management at the charity, convincing them that the funds were in good health.

The deception only came to light on 29 June 2015 when the charity’s bank flagged there was not enough money in their account to cover a credit card bill.

The account had only £611 left in it.

That same day, Golding sent a text to a colleague saying he would not be in work that day. He never returned to work.

On 13 July, Golding handed himself in to a police station in Bournemouth and was arrested and charged with the fraud.

He pleaded guilty to fraud and false accounting at an earlier hearing at the same court on 2 November.

He was sentenced on Thursday 17 December.

Following the judgement, Sunand Prasad, the charity’s Chair of trustees, said: “It is good to see that justice has been done. However, the sentence that has been handed down cannot itself repair the damage that has been done to a highly respected charity.

“It will take a while to return Article 25 to the position of financial stability that we once had, but thanks to the efforts of our team, our trustees and our supporters, we are fully operational.”

Detective Sergeant Richard George of Tower Hamlets police who led the investigation into the fraud said: “Defrauding a charity is despicable crime and Golding must face the consequences of his actions.

By pleading guilty, Golding did not put his previous employers through the ordeal of a court case but this fraud will have had a significant impact on the work the charity could have carried out.”