Mother-of-two chartered accountant who stole £40,000 from her employer to fund Alpine ski trip is jailed

A greedy chartered accountant who stole more than £40,000 from her employer and splashed out the cash on a luxury ski holiday has been jailed.Mother-of-two Kirsty Payne, 44, who earned £80,000-a-year took the money while working for refrigerated lorry service company Marshall Thermo King, trading as Marshall Fleet Solutions.Peterborough Crown Court heard how she had run a payment of £400,410 to various suppliers through the books of the Cambridge-based firm in February 2025.But the payment was £40,383 more than it should have been and she paid the extra sum into an account of one of her family members.She later admitted to police that the sum had been spent on a ski holiday break in the French Alps.Payne’s Facebook page features a picture of her posing with a group of people in a snow-covered Alpine landscape in March last year, days after her fraud was committed.Another picture of her sitting on a chairlift with family members was posted as her profile picture on her social media account in March this year.One friend posted a comment on the picture saying: ‘Alright for some. Have a great time ware (sic) ever you are.’ Kirsty Payne, 44, pictured second from left, stole more than £40,000 from her employer and splashed out the cash on a luxury ski holidayOther pictures on Facebook show her enjoying a series of summer holidays and a trip to Venice where she took a selfie of herself in a gondola.Payne of Ramsey, near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, was in breach of a suspended sentence for a similar offence when she carried out her latest fraud.She admitted one count of fraud by false representation at a hearing at Cambridge Magistrates’ Court in July this year.Payne was jailed for one year and six months which was made up of ten months for the fraud offence and the remainder for being in breach of her suspended sentence.The court heard how Payne got signed off work with a doctor’s note citing her declining mental health on March 30 last yearPayne had a wellbeing check with the company’s head of HR in April, where she immediately apologised and out of the blue admitted taking the money fraudulently from the business. She resigned during the same meeting.Payne initially claimed there was no money left in the account which she had transferred the money into, and stated that she had taken it for a family member’s medical treatment.But she revealed in a police interview that it had in fact been spent on a skiing holiday. Payne’s Facebook page features pictures of her in a snow-covered Alpine landscape in March last year, days after her fraud was committedShe claimed the decision to take the money was ‘spur of the moment’ and confirmed she had a previous conviction for fraud by false representation.Payne claimed she was having money troubles due to this, despite earning about £80,000 a year.She confided that she had been struggling with her mental health, which had been exacerbated by a family member’s terminal illness. She couldn’t explain why she had taken the money.Detective Constable Valentin Radulescu of Cambridgeshire Police said: ‘Payne gave little thought to the impact of defrauding her employer out of tens of thousands of pounds.‘By committing fraud for a second time she showed she had not learned her lesson, and this was looked on negatively by the courts, who imposed a custodial sentence which she had initially avoided.‘I hope her time behind bars allows her to reflect on her actions and hopefully, this case also serves as a warning to anyone else hoping to turn a profit through deception.’Payne was disqualified from being a company director for 11 years in February 2025 after raising false invoices for more than £325,000 while she was finance director of marketing company called Media Matters (Peterborough) Limited.The company was founded in 2015 and Payne became a director and majority shareholder in May 2018. The disgraced chartered accountant admitted one count of fraud by false representation Photos on Payne's Facebook page show her in a series of exotic locationsAn Insolvency Service report into her conduct found that she raised 30 false invoices between June 2022 and August 2022 totalling £327,031.Companies House records reveal that the company went into liquidation in 2023, owing more than £1.3m including £685,770 owed to HMRC, £177,193 to trade and expense creditors, and £98,514 in bank loans.Payne was reported to have been made bankrupt in August 2024 after a creditor’s petition was lodged by Royal Caribbean Cruises subsidiary RCL Cruises.