Abergavenny: Employee who stole £150,00 from a restaurant ordered to pay back just £1

An employee who stole £150,00 from one of Wales' notable restaurants has been ordered to pay back only £1. Nicola Nightingale exploited her position while doing the accounts for The Hardwick in Abergavenny.

She swindled her boss and left the company in huge debt just as the Covid pandemic. She wasn't alone in her theft and enlisting her husband Simon in the scam, paying tens of thousands of pounds into his bank account.

In May this year, the couple were handed suspended prison sentences at Cardiff Crown Court.

The prosecution then launched an investigation into their finances under Proceeds of Crime Act (Poca) powers in an attempt to recover some of the pair's ill-gotten gains.

The couple returned to court on Tuesday - this time via a video link - for a judge to make confiscation orders.

The court heard that following a "thorough" probe the investigators couldn't find any realisable assets, and the prosecutor asked for nominal £1 confiscation orders to be made.

The sentencing hearing in May heard how Nicola Nightingale worked as an officer administrator at The Hardwick from 2018.

She abused that position to defraud the restaurant, using a variety of means to extract money from the business including making direct payments to her account, inflating wage payments, raising additional payments disguised as wages/invoices, and making 55 payments into her husband's bank account.This dishonesty only came to light in March 2020 when the restaurant was forced to shut due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

When the chef proprietor of The Hardwick, Stephen Terry, examined the finances he discovered unauthorised payments had been made into Nightingale's bank account and two business loans worth £80,000 had been taken out without his knowledge.

The owner contacted the police, and the subsequent investigation found Nicola Nightingale had defrauded the restaurant of £150,234 while payments totalling £46,741 had been made to Simon Nightingale's bank account.

Nicola Nightingale, 47, from Kent pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position while 50-year-old Simon Nightingale was found guilty of acquiring criminal property following a trial.In mitigation, Susan Ferrier for Nicola Nightingale, said the defendant was a mother-of-five and a grandmother, who has "extreme problems with alcoholism".

The barrister said her client turned to stealing money as a way of "coping" but became addicted and was unable to stop.

In a victim personal statement that was read at the sentencing hearing, the proprietor of the restaurant Mr Terry said he had been "left with debts" at a time when the restaurant was not generating any income due to Covid, and had to "take out loans in order to repay them".

He said: "Over the past 15 years I have worked extremely hard to build a successful business.

"We have worked well with local suppliers and had strong working relationships."The impact of being defrauded of such a significant amount of money is potentially devastating.

"It has no doubt damaged our reputation and working relationships and had it not been for the unprecedented pandemic I am not certain I would have been aware of the fraud and the business would not have survived the financial loss."Yesterday's Poca hearing was told that Nicola Nightingale had benefited from her criminal conduct to the tune of £150,234 but following a "thorough" examination of her finances investigators could find no realisable assets.

Similarly, Simon Nightingale had benefitted from his criminal conduct of £46,741 but had no realisable assets.

The prosecution asked for nominal £1 confiscation orders to be made in respect of each defendant.Judge Shomon Khan said: "There has been a lot of interest in his case but there has been a thorough investigation and that's where we are in terms of the recoverable amount and this is as far as the courts can take it."

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