CAB couple 'stole up to £650,000'

The couple are alleged to have 'systematically plundered' the CAB office they ran

A couple funded a luxury lifestyle of top hotels and champagne by siphoning off up to £650,000 from a Citizens' Advice Bureau, a jury has been told.

Dale and Sally Foster, 64 and 49, from Swansea, jointly ran the charity's office in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire.

The couple both deny 11 counts of theft and five accounts of false accounting at Swansea Crown Court.

The trial heard that they spent £56,000 in three months on hotels, luxury travel and fine wine and champagne.

The couple were accused of paying for their lifestyle by "systematically plundering" the bureau's bank accounts.

Geraint Walters, prosecuting, detailed to jurors a series of the couple's big-ticket buys during several trips to London to kit themselves out for a luxury skiing trip.

Just imagine spending £40,000 by using your credit card during a period of 12 weeks when your only source of income is your legitimate employment at the CAB Geraint Walters, prosecuting

The period from mid October 2003 to mid January 2004 included a stay at the Ritz and several stopovers at the Hotel Carnaby Tower.

The skiing holiday for two to Canada's luxury Whistler resort eventually cost £17,000, the court heard.

The Fosters shopped at designer sport outlets, Harrods and Harvey Nichols as they prepared for the lavish break, Mr Walters said.

Over the three months, more than £2,000 went on champagne and fine wine, more than £8,000 on designer furniture and £1,300 on designer vinyl wallpaper for their home.

At the time, the couple were among the few salaried staff at the CAB branch which was largely run by volunteers.

Police traced credit card transactions from the couple's accounts totalling £40,000 alone, without the skiing holiday, over the three-month period.

Personal use

Mr Walters said: "Just imagine spending £40,000 by using your credit card during a period of 12 weeks when your only source of income is your legitimate employment at the CAB.

"We say that that kind of snapshot of expenditure shows that these defendants clearly knew that the lifestyle was being funded by dishonesty."

It is alleged that the pair, from Swansea, set up a bogus company and bank accounts to cover their tracks.

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.

Mr Walters said the Ammanford office had clinched a contract to run a Wales-wide CAB advice call centre from 2002 onwards.

He 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.

He said the bureau was staffed by volunteers, with the couple among the few regular salaried staff working there and Mrs Foster the manager.

Mr Foster began working there in 1997 and was contracted to do 30 hours a week for £9,000 a year.

Their alleged 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.

The trial, which is expected to last six weeks, is continuing.