Charity couple's champagne life

By Nick Parry
BBC News

The Fosters paid themselves £76,000 in expenses

Dale and Sally Foster lived an extravagant lifestyle way beyond their means.

But uncovering the extent to which they had plundered the coffers of the Citizens Advice Bureau they ran in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, was a painstaking process for police that had to be pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle.

A snapshot of their expenditure presented to the jury during the trial at Swansea Crown Court showed they spent £56,000 in three months alone on hotels, luxury travel and fine wine and champagne.

Using bank statements, credit cards and receipts, officers established that from mid-October 2003 to mid-January 2004 this included a stay at the Ritz and a skiing holiday for two at Canada's luxury Whistler resort eventually costing £17,000.

The Fosters shopped at designer sport outlets, Harrods and Harvey Nichols.

More than £2,000 went on champagne and fine wine, over £8,000 on designer furniture and £1,300 on designer vinyl wallpaper for their home.

Mr Foster began working for the non-profit making charity, run out of an old terraced house in the former mining town, in 1997 at £9,000 a year.

By 2002 his wife was running the bureau, which was mainly staffed by volunteers.

They flagrantly abused this position of trust by living a very extravagant lifestyle Det Insp Richard Hopkin

They denied theft and false accounting amounting to up to £650,000.

Judge Gerald Price directed the jury to clear Dale Foster of five charges of false accounting and to clear both of one of the theft charges.

But they were found guilty of the remaining charges and jailed for six years.

The judge told them: "The brazen nature of your offending is startling, devious and dishonest in the extreme."

During the trial the prosecution alleged that they set up a bogus company and bank accounts to cover their tracks.

When police were finally alerted and an investigation launched, officers were faced with a paper trail that stretched to thousands of documents, some genuine and others forged.

Det Insp Richard Hopkin, part of the specialist fraud investigation team at Dyfed-Powys Police, said it took 14 months' work before charges could be brought.

"This was a lengthy and complex investigation," he said.

"It involved tens of thousands of documents that had to be sifted through. There were over 400 exhibits used during the court process and 28 witnesses used as well.

"Due to the number of exhibits involved - they had to be pieced together like a jigsaw - and the authenticity of the documentation verified.

"This for the force was a major inquiry."

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, the trial heard.

The bureau operates out of a former terraced house

The Fosters were so well trusted by the trustees and volunteers at the bureau that the treasurer at the time would sign blank cheques and handed them to her for her to fill in.

DI Hopkin added: "They were obviously in a position of trust not only from their employers who trusted them implicitly with the amounts of money made available to them to run the bureau, but also by the public themselves.

"They [the public] saw them as individuals they could trust and go to to seek the necessary advice that they were looking for.

"They flagrantly abused this position of trust by living a very extravagant lifestyle beyond their means - this lifestyle being paid for from the public purse."

Stephen Bell, the chair of trustees, told the jury how, after the couple quit out of the blue, it was discovered that the office appeared to have been emptied of most of its records and even its computer system had been wiped clean.

After tracking down records that had survived, he took home a red box file of financial documents and started sorting through them.

He said he was "flabbergasted" that they had paid themselves £76,000 in expenses.

DI Hopkin said police would now try and retrieve as much money as they could from the couple, who live at Swansea Marina.

"We are now committed to pursuing a confiscation order against Dale and Sally Foster under the Proceeds of Crime Act with a view of recouping the money they stole," he added.

David Harker, chief executive of Citizens' Advice, said stringent new procedures were now in place and the bureau was on a sound footing.

"This was a despicable betrayal of trust," he said.

"The Fosters abused their position to mount a calculated and systematic campaign of fraud and deception that deprived some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in the community of money provided from public funds to pay for much-needed local advice services."