DWP worker sentenced for stealing from social club
A woman who worked for the Department of Work and Pensions has been sentenced for stealing from the agency’s sports and social club.
Emily Spencer, 28, of Devizes Drive in Irby, Merseyside, was appointed co-treasurer of the club in October 2023 and stole £2,328 by paying the club’s money into her own bank account.
The club ran a lottery, and a specific bank account was used to pay in funds and donations and pay out cash prizes or money to charitable causes.
Investigators discovered that multiple payments from that account had been made to Spencer’s personal bank account between November 2023 and April 2024.
A referral was made to the Government Internal Audit Agency’s Counter Fraud and Investigation Team when discrepancies were discovered in the account by the sports and social club’s chairman and secretary.
The investigating officer confirmed that Spencer had made 29 transfers of cash from the club’s lottery account to her own bank account. It was the same account that her wages were paid into. No legitimate reason for the transfers could be found.
During that period, Spencer had paid into the club’s account nine deposits, totalling £493.00. One of the deposits had been a donation to a hospice in memory of a colleague’s spouse who had died. The investigators contacted the hospice, but they confirmed that the donation had never been passed on to them.
She was charged by the Crown Prosecution Service with Fraud by Abuse of Position and pleaded guilty at the first hearing of the case at Sefton Magistrates’ Court on 18 December 2024.
On 29 January 2025, she was given a 16-week jail term, suspended for 12 months, and must complete 10 days of a rehabilitation activity and address her mental health needs. She was ordered to pay £1,771 back to the sports and social club in compensation.
Senior Crown Prosecutor, Ashleigh Simpson, of CPS Mersey-Cheshire, said: “Emily Spencer is a young woman who has destroyed her reputation by fraud.
“She had a good job as a civil servant and a trusted role as a co-treasurer of the DWP’s sports and social club, yet she threw all of that away by a series of fraudulent transactions over a period of six months.
“The club members thought no doubt that the funds from the charity lottery were in good hands, but Emily Spencer abused her position of trust to take money from that account and put it into her own.”