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| Advice bureau theft couple guilty | |
| (about 6 hours later) | |
| A couple have been found guilty of stealing thousands from a Citizens' Advice Bureau which they ran. | A couple have been found guilty of stealing thousands from a Citizens' Advice Bureau which they ran. |
| Dale and Sally Foster, from Swansea, were accused of stealing from the branch in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire. | |
| The pair were convicted of eight charges of theft and the jury is to continue deliberations on further charges of false accounting and theft. | The pair were convicted of eight charges of theft and the jury is to continue deliberations on further charges of false accounting and theft. |
| A judge at Swansea Crown Court has remanded the couple into custody until the verdicts have been reached. | A judge at Swansea Crown Court has remanded the couple into custody until the verdicts have been reached. |
| Mrs Foster, 51, and her husband, 65, were cleared of two charges of theft and one other joint charge of theft remains undecided. | |
| Mr Foster was also cleared of five charges of false accounting. | |
| The couple were accused of stealing the money to fund a champagne lifestyle of luxury breaks and shopping trips to Harrods and Harvey Nichols. | |
| We have certainly learnt lessons from what happened in Ammanford A CAB spokesperson | |
| A no-expense-spared ski holiday to the Canadian resort of Whistler, costing £17,000, came during a three-month spending spree at the end of 2003 when the couple went through £56,000, without including the skiing holiday. | |
| The court heard the couple were among the few regular salaried staff working at the bureau, where Mrs Foster was the manager. | |
| Mr Foster began working there in 1997 and was contracted to do 30 hours-a-week for £9,000 a year. | |
| Their success had been built on the small Ammanford office clinching a contract to run a Wales-wide CAB advice call centre from 2002 onwards. | |
| The couple set up bogus company and bank accounts to cover their tracks | |
| The prosecution said it meant the bureau, in a former terraced house, was "awash with cash". | |
| Over four years from 2002 the contract brought in £1.2m without counting substantial Welsh Assembly Government, county and community council grants. | |
| The jury heard the couple set up a series of secret accounts and used them to transfer hundreds of thousands of pounds for their own personal use, setting up a bogus company and bank accounts to cover their tracks. | |
| Their scam only came to light when both quit work overnight at Easter 2006, posting the office keys through the letterbox of a local solicitor who was a volunteer and acting bureau chairman. | |
| By the time the police were called in to investigate, the CAB office's computer accounts and all its paper documentation were missing. | |
| Banned | |
| The Fosters assured the jury during the trial that the office accounts were fully intact when they had left. | |
| The CAB has insisted that lessons have been learned from the couple's thefts. | |
| It said stricter financial measures have been put in place in offices across the UK and supervision has been strengthened. | |
| The unusual situation of having a husband and wife at the helm of a local charity office will also be banned in future, it said. | |
| A national spokesperson said: "We have certainly learnt lessons from what happened in Ammanford. | |
| "Since the Fosters left more than three years ago we have been looking at our system and how things can be changed and improved. | |
| "In Ammanford itself there is a complete new management structure since the Fosters left." |