These criminals were brought to justice at Sheffield Crown Court after their offending was exposed, in some cases after a matter of months, and in others, after years of deceit.
Among the defendants pictured here is the manager of a facility who stole £640,000 from the vulnerable adults she was paid to look after; a man jailed for stealing from his family including hundreds of thousands of pounds of his late grandmother’s savings and a defendant put behind bars for fraudulently stealing over £200,000 from his employer by setting up profiles for fake agency workers.
All of the defendants were sentenced at Sheffield Crown Court. Some admitted their crimes, while others were found guilty after a trial.
Anyone wishing to report a crime should call South Yorkshire Police on 101.
1. Nicholas Arran Whiteside: Three years' jail for fraudester who conned Sheffield retailers out of £100k
South Yorkshire Police, British Transport Police (BTP), and North Yorkshire Police teamed up on an operation to bring the defendant to justice for a series of crimes that spanned 17 months. Nicholas Arran Whiteside, 26, and of Holgate Road, York, appeared at Inner London Crown Court on October 21 2021 where he pleaded guilty to 18 counts of fraud and was subsequently jailed for three years. For nearly two years, across 2018 and 2019, Whiteside conducted fraudulent operations targeting rail ticket providers, retail outlets, a health club and individuals including his work colleagues. In that time he used fraudulently obtained bank cards to purchase train tickets via Trainline’s website – making over 100 bookings in total. His activity forced Trainline to issue chargebacks which resulted in tens of thousands of pounds in losses for the company. Whiteside also conned retail outlets in Sheffield which entailed him purchasing pre-paid gift cards from Meadowhall Shopping Centre again using fraudulent bank cards. He would then use these gift cards to purchase high value items such as laptops and iPads. Alongside these large scale scams he was targeting individuals. In the summer of 2019 he offered heavily discounted tickets for travel and entertainment to his work colleagues. By the time they identified the tickets as fake, Whiteside had resigned from the organisation. His fraudulent activity also targeted a health club by setting up a corporate account for 200 employees, a car garage to hire and use an expensive car and a letting company to rent apartments across York. Photo: 3rd party
2. Dario Goncalves and Dwight Watkinson: Conmen jailed for 27 months for defrauding Lloyds bank after £45k
Sheffield Crown Court heard on November 10 last year how Dwight Watkinson, then aged 30, of Norfolk Road, near Park Hill, and Dario Goncalves, then aged 43, of Pye Bank Road, near Burngreave, committed the phone scam between 2013 and 2020 on the Lloyds banking group. Andrew Bailey, prosecuting, said they created numerous bank accounts with various false names and phoned the Lloyds banking group hundreds of different times to complain about the process or poor service and received various amounts of compensation. There were over 1,600 calls and 807 of them resulted in individual compensation payouts ranging from £8 to £364 and during some of the calls Watkinson had been extremely abusive, according to Mr Bailey. Mr Bailey said: “The defendants’ activity was noticed by the bank because of the sheer volume of calls and the use of the same or similar names and addresses and this resulted in an investigation by the bank.” Police discovered the defendants had mobile phones, paperwork and notes with bank details linking them to the offences with over 8,000 relevant calls found on two mobile phones connected to Goncalves and over 5,000 on three phones connected to Watkinson. Goncalves and Watkinson, who have previous convictions, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit fraud by false representation. Judge Roger Thomas sentenced both defendants to 27 months of custody each. Photo: SYP
3. Zoe Guest: South Yorkshire fraudster jailed after duping employer out of tens of thousands of pounds
Sheffield Crown Court heard on January 19, 2022 how Zoe Guest, then aged 35, of West Park Drive, Swallownest, Rotherham, was working as a finance manager for True Life Ltd when she transferred tens of thousands of pounds from the company into her own account. Richard Davies, prosecuting, said: “The fraudulent activity took place between August 28, 2016, and September 14, 2018, when the defendant transferred funds from True Life Ltd into a joint bank bank account in her name and the defendant's partner's name.” Mr Davies added the general manager spotted a number of unexplained payments with invoices in the name of Bespoke Sales and she discovered they had been made into the defendant’s joint bank account. Guest had been logging into accounts and creating fake Bespoke Sales invoices, according to Mr Davies, and she had been funneling the money into her account and she had used the login details of an ex-employee as well as her own. Mr Davies said the total amount involved in the fraud was calculated at £81,800.58p but defence barrister Natalie Csengeri said an analysis of the exact amount had not yet been completed. Guest, who has no previous convictions, pleaded guilty to committing fraud between August 28, 2016, and September 14, 2018. She was nine weeks' pregnant at the time of her sentencing, but Judge Peter Kelson QC jailed Guest for 18 months, and told her the fraud was so serious that appropriate punishment could only be achieved by custody because such offending must be deterred. Photo: SYP
4. Angela Jayne Kitchener: Bride jailed for conning maid-of-honour out of £27k in three year web of deceit
Heartless bride, Angela Jayne Kitchener, conned her maid of honour out of £27,000 during a three-year campaign of deception by telling her she was due to inherit £77 million following the death of her ex-husband. Photo: SYP