A cleaner who stole more than £6,000 from a York couple has been spared jail.
Michaela Martin, 36, was hired to clean the couple’s home in Clementhorpe, near Bishopthorpe Road, but in the summer of 2022 they discovered that £6,000 was missing from their safe in the spare bedroom, York Magistrates’ Court heard.
The couple were initially baffled as they were the only ones with a key and a security code to the safe.
But the finger of suspicion inevitably pointed to Martin, who was caught on the couple’s in-house CCTV rummaging in a bedside-cabinet drawer – after she gave a friendly ‘hello’ to their pet dog Rupert who was sat on the bed.
The massive cash haul were deposits from the named husband’s business, and his wife also suspected that Martin, a single mother, had stolen “a few hundred pounds” from her.
Police were called in and searched Martin’s home in nearby Southlands Road, where they found documents in her kitchen showing she had unpaid loans and council-tax debts.
The stolen cash had been deposited by Martin into bank accounts which enabled her to spend money on presents for her family, and “perhaps” on everyday items and to pay off her debts.
She was arrested and charged with theft by employee, but denied the offence and the case went to trial last month, when magistrates found her guilty as charged in her absence.
Spent at ‘multiple retailers’
Martin appeared for sentence yesterday (Wednesday) after also pleading guilty to failing to surrender to court bail following her no-show at the trial, which resulted in an arrest warrant.
She received a 12-week jail sentence for the theft and two weeks consecutive for failing to turn up in court, but the total 14-week prison term was suspended for 12 months, primarily because Martin was sole carer for her children.
Prosecutor Martin Butterworth said it was agreed that the total sum stolen from the couple was £6,200, not the £7,000 initially alleged by the prosecution.
The victim said that the safe, which was hidden in a “Victorian cupboard”, could only be opened by the code and the key which was kept in her husband’s private side drawer in their bedroom.
On 5 August, 2022, she let Martin in, then went shopping. Three days later, her husband said there was £6,000 missing from the safe. She then checked an envelope which had about £200 inside, and that was missing too.
She said she was in “disbelief”, but then it dawned on her that Martin must have been “going through our cupboards” until she found the safe key.
Just under a week later, her husband was watching footage on his phone from the security camera inside the bedroom and saw Martin going straight to his bedside drawers where the safe key was kept.
Martin, who has a previous caution to her name for a “dishonesty” offence, told police she was “in shock” after being accused of stealing the vast amount of cash bundles from the safe.
When officers put it to her that there had been a previous incident where she had stolen from an employer, she replied: “I knew this would come up.”
It transpired that the day after the theft from the York couple, some £2,545 had been deposited into a Lloyd’s bank account under Martin’s name.
Between August 6 and 11, there were multiple payments amounting to £2,379 into a Nationwide account. The money appeared to have been spent online at “multiple retailers”.
‘Totally violated’
The named female victim said she had now “lost a lot of trust in people” and she and her husband had struggled to sleep since Martin’s gross betrayal.
“She searched through our personal items,” added the victim. “I feel totally violated.”
She said it had “created a terrible atmosphere in the house” and she had suffered from stress and “terrible” mood swings since the thefts and had to move home.
Martin’s solicitor Kevin Blount said that Martin had a bona fide cleaning company at the time of the “opportunistic” theft and there had been no previous “mishaps” while working for other clients.
“She carried on with this business until 2024 without any suggestion of any concerns,” he added.
He said that Martin gave up the cleaning business in December last year to home-school her children and now lived off benefits.
District judge Adrian Lower told Martin: “It’s not so much the sum of money that’s taken that is the concern, it’s the upset that an offence like this causes; that (the victims) allowed someone into their home, and you abused their trust.
“They find it difficult to trust other people now…and that’s a very sad effect of this offending.”
As well as the 14-week suspended prison sentence, Martin was ordered to carry out 150 hours’ unpaid work and pay the victims £2,000 compensation.