A RYEDALE credit company agent pocketed her clients’ deposits and cheated her employers out of more than £15,000 to help pay her own debts, York Crown Court heard.

Linda Malig, 56, sold loans to clients in their homes and collected their repayments weekly, as she arranged and supervised credit agreements to 269 people in the Malton area, said Deborah Smithies, prosecuting.

But unbeknown to her employers, she pocketed some of the repayments the clients gave her and forged their signatures on loan agreements to benefit herself over 18 months.

Eventually internal checks revealed “irregularities” in her customers’ accounts and she confessed her crimes to her employers. She had never been in trouble before and she and her husband had county court judgements against them of £27,000 as well as legitimate loans.

Recorder Tahir Khan QC told her the breach of trust was so severe he had to pass a prison sentence, but he didn’t have to make her serve the sentence.

“But for the dire financial circumstances that you were in, you would not have committed these offences,” he said.

Malig, of Murchison Street, Scarborough, pleaded guilty to theft and fraud by false representation and was given a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months on condition she does 180 hours’ unpaid work. She faces a hearing later this year when a judge will be asked to confiscate her assets and repay the company. Miss Smithies said Malig arranged £13,700 in illegal loans for herself and pocketed £1,628.33 in repayments from four customers between August 2009 and January 2011. Malig had worked for the company for 12 years. She and her husband had got into debt and spent most of her earnings on debt repayments. She also felt obliged to satisfy the frequent demands from her husband’s Filipino relatives to send money to them. The credit company sacked her after the offences were discovered. She had repaid £8,500 of the money before the court hearing.

Chloe Fairley, mitigating, said: “She is racked with shame and remorse for what she has done.”

Malig’s husband did not work so she brought in their only income and also looked after her grandson for three or four times a week so her daughter could go to work.