A SCHEMING office worker destroyed her company and left her colleagues on the dole by stealing £200,000 which she spent on a new house and car.

Rachel Elizabeth White, 30, fiddled the accounts of the family-run electrical firm and paid herself almost three times her salary, while also pretending to have cancer, York Crown Court heard.

She forged documents including wage slips from Cooper Electrical Services (York) Ltd, of Dunnington, which has since gone into receivership with the loss of 14 jobs.

White, of Gale Lane, Acomb, York, used the documents to take out loans and bought a top-of-the range Mini worth £19,300 and a £141,000 house in Market Weighton.

She pleaded guilty to six charges of theft and seven of fraud, and is today starting a jail sentence of two years and eight months, while her former bosses Patricia and David Cooper are coping with the loss of their business and family home.

David Garnett, prosecuting, said the couple put up their home as security for a £75,000 business loan and worked all hours in a desperate bid to save the company after White’s crimes were exposed. But receivers took over in April and all the staff lost their jobs.

He said the Coopers had treated White as a member of their family and said: “The fact is what she has done will remain with both of them for the rest of their lives and the damage cannot be repaired.”

None of the £201,336 White stole between 2004 and March 2009 will be recovered.

Her solicitor advocate Robin Smith said his client was declared bankrupt last month and it was not clear what she had spent the money on.

Mr Smith said: “She is not suggesting she was underpaid. She accepts she was adequately paid for the work she did”.

Mr Garnett said White started work with the company in July 2002 as an office assistant and after it converted its accounts to a computer-based system in 2004 she took over accounting duties including paying wages through the BACS system. She used the computer system to siphon extra funds to her own account and though errors started attracting her seniors’ attention in 2007, they treated her as a friend and no direct action was taken.

Her earnings went from £10,000 in 2004 to £12,400 in 2008, but in 2004 she gave herself £33,000 from the company. By early 2009, management were becoming suspicious and on March 17, after she was asked to about the company’s finances, she walked out and never returned. Mr Smith said she contacted solicitors on March 18 and asked them to tell her employers what she had been doing. He said co-operated fully with police. She could have stolen because she had low self-esteem and felt she had failed to live up to her parents’ expectations.

• The firm affected is Cooper Electrical Services (York) Ltd. A separate firm, Cooper Electrical Services Northern Ltd, also based in Dunnington, is unaffected.