Woman regarded as "family" jailed for £300,000 fraud after betraying Portsmouth business

Paulsgrove fraudster Lesley Stewart, 49, of Allaway Avenue, became office manager for Portsmouth firm Shergold & Stewart Carpentry & Refurbishment Ltd in 2019 before quickly beginning her campaign of fraud and deceit over a four-year period.

But Stewart, who has the same surname as the firm’s co-owner Mark Stewart but is not related, has now been jailed for three years and four months at Portsmouth Crown Court. Mr Stewart said her incarceration brought to an end the “worst part of our lives”. He told The News the company, which he co-owns with Ross Shergold, was left with a massive £110,000 HMRC bill of which £70,000 has been paid back. 

In total, Mr Stewart thinks the business was left around £400,000 out of pocket after the company, which has recently moved to Waterlooville, was taken to court by firms resulting in £80,000 of legal fees.

The defendant, who was friends with Mr Stewart’s wife Della for 20 years and would regularly visit their house, has only paid back £800 so far - despite empty promises of paying back the money. Her attempt to portray herself as an altruistic person by doing charity work before her sentence hearing failed to deliver the suspended sentence she had told people she was going to receive.

Mr Stewart, speaking of the decision to imprison his former office manager, said: “I feel so much better now she is in jail. It’s been the worst part of our lives. It has consumed us and we’ve all struggled. 

“We were worried she was going to get a suspended sentence after she told her family and friends this is what she would get. We now have some justice for what she did to us. We’ve had nice messages from her friends and family who were lied to as well.”

Stewart admitted one count of fraud by abuse of position between January 1, 2019, and December 14, 2022. She faces a proceeds of crime hearing on August 30 over paying back money she stole.

Stewart began her campaign of “manipulation” shortly after being handed the job with her fraud accelerating after Covid hit when she started working from home and dealt exclusively with HMRC and changing the address details to her own. She would make-up false invoices and emails from the bank to mask how she was pocketing the cash, which Mr Stewart said amounted to around £8,000 a month going missing.

Stewart’s thieving from the firm who employed her was so brazen she would sit with Mr Stewart and his wife and try to establish where the money had gone. “She was like family in many ways and would be over at our house every couple of weeks and would help out with things. She sat with us when we were putting our own money in to keep the business afloat trying to figure out where the money was going,” he said.

“She manipulated me, my business partner, my wife and others over a long period of time. It had a massive toll on us as a family and created tensions between me and my wife and business partner. She would tell me my business partner’s part of the business was not working and vice versa.

“Lesley would turn on the crocodile tears when there was any blame suggested towards her and would get back-up from my wife. She stopped the business growing and we had to push and push to earn money and keep things going. I feel a fool for what happened but the fact is we trusted her 100 per cent.”

Mr Stewart said the company was overdrawn but it was his mum, who has since been forced to come out of retirement to help the running of the business, that figured out what was happening in January 2023. Meanwhile, the company’s bank NatWest was branded “awful” by Mr Stewart after failing to spot the fraud and only dealing with the defendant. “We asked them where the money was going and asked for the sort code and account numbers and it took two months to get it out of them. In that time another £34,000 was stolen,” he said.

Asked why Stewart had betrayed him by stealing from the business, Mr Stewart said: “Pure greed. Police said she lived a criminal lifestyle and just spent the money. She would go on nice holidays and that sort of thing but nothing really extravagant. We knew she had some inheritance money so thought she was using that to fund it. It was the worst decision we ever made employing her.”

Despite two years of struggling, Mr Stewart said the business is now doing “very well” following the cash-flow problems the former office manager caused. But despite his ordeal, Mr Stewart said he has had to draw a line under what happened now. “It would eat me up if I allowed it to. It’s already taken part of my life away. I’m just glad it’s over and she is in jail.”