'My big fraudulent wedding'

Bride stole £170,000 from her boss for lavish dream wedding

With a harpist greeting guests, catering by an award-winning chef, a free bar and a personalised fireworks display, it was a wedding designed to impress.

And it had the desired effect on the bride's boss, who was among 100 guests at the no-expense-spared bash in a medieval banqueting hall.

Incredulous at how 29-year-old part-time accounts clerk Kirsty Lane could afford such a lavish ceremony, Peter Sutton took a closer look at the books – and discovered she had stolen nearly £170,000 from the firm.

The mother of one was arrested before she had a chance to leave for their honeymoon in Mexico, and yesterday she was facing a possible jail sentence over the audacious fraud.

Afterwards Mr Sutton told how her 'unbridled greed' had almost ruined his video conferencing business.

'I trusted her implicitly and this was how she repaid us,' he said. 'The wedding was the most lavish thing I've ever seen.'

As Kirsty Rimmer, the bride-to-be had worked for four years for Pure AV in Leyland, Lancashire, earning less than £15,000 a year.

All the directors were invited to her wedding to Graham Lane – who works for an alarm firm – in January, with other colleagues joining for the reception.

The event at the mock-Tudor Great Hall at Mains, near Blackpool, cost up to £40,000. Guests were serenaded by harpist Maxine Molin-Rose and were served canapés with buck's fizz while being entertained by a saxophonist and magician.

The wedding breakfast was provided by celebrity chef Paul Heathcote's firm and was accompanied by a swing singer, followed by a free bar and music from a Motown-style band plus a DJ.

Children were entertained by face-painting and balloon-modelling while all guests were given feather masks to get them in the spirit of the occasion.

Such was the attention to detail that the new Mrs Lane and her bridesmaids all had black Ugg boots matching their outfits to protect them from the cold when photographs were taken outside.

All the bridesmaids were given jewel-encrusted iPods to take home with them.

The evening ended with a fireworks display featuring the couple's initials illuminated as the centrepiece.

They left in a white limousine for a 'minimoon' in the Lake District before their main honeymoon in Mexico. 'It was really over the top from the moment we arrived to the time we left,' said a colleague who was there.

'They had absolutely everything you could wish for, and it must have cost tens of thousands. We even joked with Kirsty that we were going to go back to the office and check the accounts.

'She certainly wasn't well off, and the story we were given was that her mother had been made redundant and the money she received was paying for it.'

Days after the wedding, while Mrs Lane was still in the Lake District, managing director Mr Sutton was alerted to a problem with an invoice.

Ordinarily he would have dismissed it as a genuine mistake but, having seen how spectacular her wedding had been, he decided to dig deeper, company sources said.

There was enough evidence to suspend her on her return from the Lake District. A full investigation was launched and she was arrested shortly before the pair were due to jet out to Mexico. 'If she had been in work when the problem surfaced, she would have been able to hide it like she had for so long,' Mr Sutton said.

'But because I was already getting suspicious, it all started to come out. It was a very clever, incredibly devious operation.'

Two people lost their jobs as a result of the firm's struggles following Lane's fiddling. She had been using real invoices to existing suppliers to create extra payments into her own bank account for more than two years.

It took two months to uncover the full extent of the deception.

Mr Sutton said the firm had even loaned Lane £7,000 and increased her wages after she complained of struggling financially.

'We are not a large company,' he added. 'How it didn't sink us I don't know. It is only through the sheer determination of the rest of the team that we are still here.'

The firm, which has 18 employees and specialises in audiovisual equipment for offices, is now recovering.

Lane, from Adlington, near Chorley, had allegedly stolen about £168,000, also using the money to buy luxuries including a £1,500 jewel-encrusted case for her iPad.

She admitted ten counts of fraud worth a total of £38,000 at Leyland Magistrates' Court and asked for a further 112 to be considered.

She will be sentenced later while her husband will face court next month.

(Published by Daily Mail - September 1, 2011)

latest top stories

subscribe |  contact us |  sponsors |  migalhas in portuguese |  migalhas latinoamérica