A TRUSTED accounts clerk who stole £625,000 from her Merseyside employer was yesterday sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail.

Sheila Hodgetts’s five-year scam was so damaging to Waterloo-based company R Betts Construction Ltd that directors were forced to lay off workers.

The 52-year-old, who pleaded guilty in December last year to eight counts of theft and one of fraud, wept as Justice Mark Brown handed down the sentence at Liverpool Crown Court.

Hodgetts’ crimes began in 2002 when she gained access to the civil engineering firm’s electronic wages list.

She invented fake employees and over the next five years paid wages into false accounts she had created for these non-existent staff.

But in reality, all the money was going into her pocket to pay for a deposit on a house and home improvements, the court heard yesterday.

Between November 21, 2002, and May 10, 2007, she stole a total of £625,000 from the construction firm, based on Great George’s Road.

Prosecutor Philip Astbury, said that in Mr Betts’ impact statement he described Hodgetts’s theft as a “prolonged and premeditated betrayal of trust”.

He added that Mr Betts had been led to believe that Hodgetts was suffering from a serious health condition and undergoing surgery for cancer.

She was, in fact, having cosmetic surgery.

By the time suspicion began to fall on Hodgetts, in August, 2007, she had created a fake CV to secure a job with St Helens firm, Kirk Craig Ltd.

She managed to steal a further £3,700 from them.

Hodgetts, of Knowsley Road, St Helens, had originally faced 91 charges with each count reflecting a separate incident of theft, but the charges had been condensed into over-arching counts covering each year of her offending.

Raymond Herman, defending, told the court Hodgetts had admitted a string of offending and confessed to police she had a previous conviction from when she had been working for St Helens Council.

The court also heard that in 2000 to 2001, Hodgetts had stolen £125,000 from her employer of eight years, Allenbuild Ltd.

The company chose not to prosecute, but Hodgetts had to sell her house in order to pay back her employers.

Mr Herman told the court yesterday that psychiatric reports showed that Hodgetts, who had suffered the breakdown of two marriages, had a history of depression and low self-esteem.

Justice Brown said he did not accept that there was a “psychiatric dimension” to the crime, but he did say that the pre-sentencing reports should accompany her to prison. In his summing up, Justice Brown said that Hodgetts “stole in a systematic, cold and ruthless way by seriously abusing [her employer’s] friendship and trust”.

He told Hodgetts: “You are a serious fraudster and accomplished liar. You have shown no real remorse for what you have done to Mr Betts.”

Describing Hodgetts as a “very manipulative individual”, he said: “I am satisfied that your motive has always been one of financial gain.”