Mother-of-two 'addicted to TikTok' blew £300,000 on gifts for her favourite creators after stealing £500,000 from her employer

Daily Mail​

4 hours ago

A mother-of-two who was 'addicted' to TikTok spent £300,000 on gifts for her favourite content creators after stealing almost half a million pounds from her company.
Katherine Greenall, 29, from St Helens, Liverpool, was left in tears as she was told she would spend 28 months in prison for her fraud.
The mother stole the eye-watering sum of money while working as an accounts manager for a car company and spent her ill-gotten gains on TikTok tokens.
The virtual currency was then spent on Greenall's favourite content creators for her 'amusement and entertainment'.
She claimed she had not been living a lavish lifestyle and only started stealing from her boss to fund household purchases but her spending spree quickly spiralled and she splashed out on hotels, holidays and Amazon purchases.
Over the course of 121 payments, she siphoned off £443,523.26 from the company and her crime spree was only stopped after bosses began to ask questions over lower than expected profits, the Liverpool Echo reported.
The 29-year-old had been working at New Reg Ltd, a car buying company, as a customer services manager since April 2021 and in December 2022 was promoted to accounts manager, giving her access to the company bank accounts.
Christopher Taylor, prosecuting told Liverpool Crown Court on Friday that the 'trusted and respectable' manager committed a 'significant abuse of trust' by manipulating financial reports to cover her tracks.
During her spending spree, Greenall made 53 unauthorised deposits in to her bank account, totalling £57,036 in 2023.
She spent the small fortune on supermarket shops, restaurants and cafes, Amazon Prime and sports shops.
She also splashed out on family holidays and hotel bookings and even hired a family lawyer.
The mother-of-two then ramped up her spending the following year, making another four deposits to her account totalling £8,917 in January alone.
In February she siphoned off a further ten payments amounting to £14,916.
And the following month her illegal bank transfers had exploded and she took home a shocking £146,288 over the course of 20 payments.
By April, Greenall's spending was completely out of control and in the course of just four weeks, transferred herself £196,364.26.
The Liverpudlian only began to raise suspicion among senior management after they discovered smaller than expected profits were being officially recorded.
In a company meeting on May 1, Greenall promised to investigate the discrepancies and returned to her desk where she made a final deposit of £20,000 and then fled work, clamming her family were sick.
A week later on May, 7, Greenall admitted her criminal actions and was arrested on May 13.
When interviewed by police, the young mother claimed she had 'not been living a lavish lifestyle' and had only £700 in her bank account.
She explained how the deposits had started off as small and were only used to fund household purchases but quickly ballooned as she spent the cash on TikTok tokens.
She confessed to becoming addicted to the social media app and revealed sending the tokens made her feel better during a period where she felt very low.
Out of the enormous £443,523.26 of swindled funds, Greenhall spent £301,162.55 on TikTok tokens in the 21-month period.
Her spending spree almost pushed the car company, which had been operating since 1995, to financial ruin and put 30 of her former colleagues at risk of redundancy.
Greenall has no previous convictions. Paul Becker, defending, told the court that she 'may have been suffering from a form of addiction to TikTok', but stated that she had 'no formal diagnosis to such an addiction'.
Greenall admitted one count of fraud by abuse of position.
Her two children, a six-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy with severe ADHD, will be cared for by her sister, a nursery care worker while she is in prison.
Sentencing, Judge Neil Flewitt KC said: 'You are 29 years of age and of previous good character. You are a good mum to two young children, one of whom has particular challenges. You were trusted and respected. Your employers were aware of the challenges that you faced at home and made allowed allowances.
'You repaid their trust in you by stealing from them on a massive scale. Over a period from January 2023 to the beginning of May 2024, you stole almost £450,000. You covered you what you were doing by manipulating documents that were used for accounting purposes by the company, and you put that money into your own bank account.
He concluded by saying: 'It is a matter of regret that I have a public duty which I have to fulfil. It is a tragedy that those children are going to suffer as a result of your dishonesty. I have taken the view that there is simply no way to avoid what I am sure you have been advised is the inevitable sentence of imprisonment. This is simply too much money and too much damage caused here.'