A WORKER at coffee machine giant Nespresso cheated her way to £12,500 in six months, through fraud on an “industrial and ingenious” scale.

Megan Emily Turpin, 23, was working at the company’s customer service centre in Haxby Road, York, but set up her own business selling the company’s stock without permission, York Crown Court heard.

Michael Bosomworth, prosecuting, said she used the Nespresso databases and the Amazon website to supply her customers more than 200 times, getting Nespresso to send out the goods and then pocketing the proceeds.

Turpin pleaded guilty to theft and was given a nine-month suspended prison sentence.

Only when one customer queried with Nespresso directly why he had paid £74 when the documents supplied with his milk frothing machine said it cost £46 was her fraud detected, the court heard.

In six months, she had netted £12,480 and the company estimated it had lost about £20,000 in stock, postage and packaging.

The Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, told Turpin: “It is quite clear you are someone quite capable of being extremely devious and dishonest.”

He described the fraud as being on an “industrial, ingenious scale”.

He gave her a nine-month prison sentence suspended for two years on condition she does 250 hours’ unpaid work, with 12 months’ supervision and rehabiliative activities.

He also gave her six months to show how she could repay the £12,480.

York graduate Turpin, 23, now of Howard Court, Stevenage, pleaded guilty to theft. The court heard she was cautioned in 2007 for theft using dishonest receipts from her then employers, a clothes store.

Her barrister Glenn Parsons said she had been the victim of domestic violence at the time of the fraud and was suffering from depression. Once she had started the fraud, she found it difficult to stop. All the money made by the scam went through her partner’s bank account. He had run up debts and found it a source of “ready money”.

Since her arrest, she had returned to live with her parents and was starting to put her life back together. She had found employment that didn’t involve her handling money and was hoping it could become permanent.

The company had not suffered financial hardship and the fraud had not cost anyone else their job, the court heard.

A Nespresso spokesman said it had co-operated fully with the police investigation.