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Chopped founder ‘sickened’ as employee who stole €82k from company walks free

Finance worker who stole €82K from chain escapes prison term

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The founder of health food chain Chopped has spoken of his disgust after an employee who stole €82,000 from the company walked free from court with a suspended sentence.

Brian Lee said the decision not to jail the company’s former chief financial officer Mairead Latimer served as an ‘advertisement’ to others that they can do the same thing and walk away without serving a single day behind bars.

“It’s sickening that she is allowed away scot free after this crime,” he said, “a crime that put many jobs at jeopardy because of her greed.

“These crimes need to be treated with real sentences to act as a deterrent.

“Her sentence is an advertisement to others that they will most likely walk away with no prison time.”

Latimer (35), of Corr Castle, Howth, Co Dublin appeared before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for sentencing on October 13.

She received a sentence of two years and six months in prison — suspended for the same period on condition she fully repays the €82,000 she stole from her former employers.

Appearing before the same court earlier this year, Latimer had pleaded guilty to a total of four counts of stealing money from Chopped between December 2016 and July 2018.

Detective Garda Declan O’Carolan outlined how during this period Latimer stole money in four different ways from Chopped.

He said she made payments to ghost employees, with more than €43,000 going into her father’s account.

She authorised inflated wage payments to herself of over €12,000 that had not been approved by the directors.

She took more than €22,000 from a Chopped shop on Grafton Street and in Lucan and authorised more than €3,000 in the form of increased pension payments to her own pension plan.

The court heard that Latimer has paid back €73,546 to Chopped Limited with a further €7,852 outstanding.

The scam only came to light in July 2018 when one of the company’s two directors was looking at staff rotas and wage payments.

He saw that they were paying an employee who was not rostered anywhere. He asked Latimer to investigate and said he wanted answers the following week.

The following week, Latimer confessed to making up the ghost employee and claimed this was the extent of her actions.

She offered to work at a reduced rate until the money was paid back. Due to the breach of trust, Chopped ended her employment on August 1, 2018.

Latimer subsequently wrote a handwritten letter to the directors saying that she would pay back the money.

The court heard that Chopped began their own internal investigation and asked Latimer for her bank statements. She gave them bank statements, which turned out to be fake.

Managers from two Chopped shops also gave statements outlining how, on a number of occasions, Latimer told them there was a problem with the usual secure cash pick-up and that she would be collecting the money.

In August 2018, Latimer was arrested after she attended a garda interview by appointment. She was cooperative, answered questions and made admissions to the gardai.

Det Garda O’Carolan agreed with Dominic McGinn SC, defending, that Latimer had paid back over 90 per cent of the money to Chopped.

The garda also agreed with counsel that Latimer is now in employment elsewhere and volunteers with a crisis text line.

Mr McGinn said his client is married and has a stepchild. Latimer’s husband, the court heard, is in full-time education and she is the main breadwinner.

He said that her mother also suffers from Parkinson’s disease and needs to be brought in for medical appointments by her daughter. He submitted that Latimer is extremely unlikely to re-offend in the future and asked the court to take note of the probation report.

He said Latimer has “lived her life in a law-abiding way, except for this incident”.

He also asked the court to take into account how dependent Latimer’s mother is on her and her husband and stepchild.​

Chopped founder Mr Lee previously told the Sunday World he was glad Latimer, whose married name is Doody, has now been publicly exposed as a fraudster.

“I believe it is important for other business owners that her name is out there and people will be aware of the kind of person she really is,” he said.

“And I want to pay tribute to the work done by Det Gda Declan O’Carolan… It’s because of his efforts and hard work that five years after she committed these crimes, she has been called to account for what she did.”