Edinburgh charity worker embezzling almost £30,000 from care home residents

An Edinburgh charity worker has been sentenced after embezzling nearly £30,000 from vulnerable and disabled care home residents.

Margaret Burnett stole the money from five residents at a Leonard Cheshire home in the capital between January 2014 and August 2016.

The 69-year-old was a team leader at the supported accommodation facility when she illegally used bank cards belonging to five residents to make numerous withdrawals from their accounts.

She had been employed at the charity for 13 years.

Staff controlled the residents’ finances, and all transactions involving their accounts were officially logged in a cash book.

As team leader, Burnett had access to the home’s safe and a locked cabinet containing residents’ banking cards.

The Royal Bank of Scotland contacted the charity in September 2016 after it identified ATM withdrawals totalling several hundred pounds from one resident’s account.

Officials from the charity then discovered several withdrawals of between £100 and £300 which had not been recorded in logbooks or the residents’ diaries.

The home’s management alerted police to the situation, and a subsequent investigation found that Burnett had accessed the bank accounts of five vulnerable service users.

The court heard that Burnett used the bank card of one victim while he was in hospital and “physically unable to withdraw the cash”.

One victim, who has since died, had cerebral palsy, while another suffered from multiple sclerosis.

Burnett was suspended and then dismissed from her job before being arrested in November 2019.

She was handed a 12-month supervision order and made the subject of a restriction of liberty order.

The ex-charity worker was also ordered to pay the victims of her offending who are still alive £3,000 each in compensation within 28 days.

Neil Almond, interim procurator fiscal for Lothian and Borders, said: “Margaret Burnett committed an egregious betrayal of trust.

“These residents depended on her to play a part in their financial arrangements. But she flagrantly abused her position to use their money for her own benefit.

“Let the public be assured that we take such financial criminality extremely seriously.

“Those who commit this type of offending will be dealt with robustly by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.”