GP surgery manager who stole £320,000 ordered to pay back £44,000

The manager of a busy doctors' surgery who systematically stole almost a third of a million pounds from the business has been ordered to pay back £44,000 of her ill-gotten gains.

Clare Boland used her trusted role in charge of finances to pay herself thousands of pounds a month on top of her £53,000 annual salary.

The defendant was the practice manager of the Fairfield surgery in Port Talbot, a GP centre with more than 800 patients on its books when she fleeced the business over a four-year period.

Swansea Crown Court has previously heard that Boland's role meant she had sole responsibility for the surgery's finances including organising payments to doctors and staff and paying bills and expenses.

She used that position to set up regular monthly payments in the name of a real medic who had previously done some locum work at the practice. In fact the money was going straight into a Co-op bank account controlled by the defendant.

The court heard the fraud only came to light in February 2022 when one of the doctors at the surgery happened to see a document which set out staff payments and noticed a payment of £9,000 to a doctor who had worked as a one-day-a-week locum at the surgery some years previously.

By the time the theft came to light, the defendant had pocketed a total of £324,706. In March this year Boland, of Shelone Road, Briton Ferry, was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to fraud by abuse of position. The court heard the theft had a significant impact on the surgery and left staff "devastated" and fearing for their jobs.

The case returned to court his week following a financial investigation under Proceeds of Crime Act powers. The court heard it was agreed Boland had benefited from her criminal conduct to the tune of £389,732.

Judge Catherine Richards made a confiscation order in the available sum, which must be paid in three months with a period of six months in prison if the money isn't paid.

At the original sentencing hearing barrister Robin Rouch, for Boland, said once the payment arrangements had been set up they continued monthly with "little involvement" by the defendant, and once the payments were detected they were always going to be traced back to the defendant.

Mr Rouch said immediate custody would have a significant impact on the defendant's daughter, including the likely loss of the family home, but he said it was accepted the situation was one of Boland's own making.

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