A two-faced con-woman is starting four years in jail for adding York to her web of crime.

Louise Winskill "lied and lied and lied again" as she cheated a series of companies out of more than £100,000 in total, the Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman said.

As each employer uncovered her crimes against them, she moved on to another and then another around the country.

But when she targeted York Science Park, she met her nemesis. Today, she is starting three-and-a-half years behind bars for her latest deceptions, plus six months for trying to con the judge into believing a fish and chip shop was a hospital.

"It is quite plain to me the public deserve some respite from your fraudulent serial activities," he said.

Winskill, 35, formerly of Thief Lane, York, and most recently of a secret address in Northamptonshire, pleaded guilty to 32 charges of deception totalling £25,618 at her former employers, York Science Park, and one of getting a job at the company by concealing her previous convictions.

York Crown Court heard it was the fourth such time she had conned her way into a position of trust in a company and when auditors at York Science Park spotted her activities, she successfully used the trick for a fifth time to get a job in Northamptonshire.

Two years running, as secretary to its managing director, she cheated the York company out of ten per cent of its annual profits as she wrote out cheques to fake companies and diverted money for her own use and to pay her credit card, child care and other debts.

She even used her innocent boyfriend, Carl Moss, in £11,000 of her deceptions.

The court heard she gave a receptionist at the company an unofficial £1-an-hour payrise and another staff member an unauthorised company car.

"Sometimes people with lots of money running through their fingers get a kick by paying money to others. That may be a motive in your case or it may be you were wanting to keep them 'sweet'," said the judge.

"You are a fluent, plausible and presentable liar," he added, saying he was convinced she would still be duping York Science Park had the auditors not acted.

Winskill also admitted skipping bail on October 13, when she should have been sentenced. The judge said that to deceive the court, she had pretended to be a nurse and telephoned with a concocted story that she had to be admitted to hospital.

Her barrister, Simon Reevell, said she had called from a fish and chip shop and had always intended to hand herself in the next Monday, as she had done. She had an "uncontrollable desire to behave in a dishonest way" and had great difficulty doing anything in a straightforward manner.

Mum-of-two who stole cash from employers

SCHEMING Louise Winskill began her career of dishonesty in the late 1990s when she was still Louise Simons and living in Dukinfield, Ashton-under-Lyne.

She signed on with a recruitment agency and found work at three firms, stealing at least £120,000 over a two-year period.

Winskill, now a mum of two, would win respect as an accountant -- but was soon spreading rumours about colleagues, pretending to have affairs and lying that she had been diagnosed with cancer.

She joined the first firm, Medical and Industrial Manufacturing Ltd, which makes hospital engineering products, in 1997, and began forging cheques.

But while Winskill was on holiday in Australia, spending the proceeds of her crimes, other staff noticed discrepancies.

Later, Winskill was jailed for 30 months in 1999 and just six months later she was back before a judge for hiding £41,000 of the cash she had looted.

Then she was imprisoned in Manchester. Later, she was transferred to Askham Grange Prison, York.

She later met Peter Winskill, a book binder who worked at York University, and the pair married in 2002 at York Register Office and settled down in Thief Lane, York.

Winskill went on to work at York Science Park.

There she became personal assistant to managing director Suzanne Gilbert.

She siphoned off at least £25,618.

Updated: 10:12 Monday, November 21, 2005