Couple print themselves in the naughty corner

Madeleine Webster, an NHS administrator from Liverpool, was jailed yesterday after she spent years defrauding her own department by buying £160,000 of printer cartridges with public money before selling them on eBay. The money she and her husband Stephen took from the NHS would have funded six full-time nursing posts, but no, the couple just had to buy and resell those cartridges - and they made around a £90,000 profit from the sales, using the money to fund holidays and buy luxurious items. Webster and her husband were sentenced to a total of 39 months in jail, with the wife getting 26 and the husband getting 13. Steve McNally, prosecuting, told the Liverpool Crown Court how her plot was uncovered 'quite by chance' when she sent an email to friend and colleague Debbie Brown which linked to her eBay account. Her account contained a lot of references to printer ink cartridges being sold and positive feedback from buyers. Mr McNally said 'having seen those references, Ms Brown became concerned because she could recall several occasions when there had been a lot of ink cartridges at their office which had either not been required or had been placed for use in printers they did not even have.' Webster's boss Bernadine Lynam also recalled occasions she had been working late and saw the couple removing items from the office via the fire door. Mr McNally said of those occasions 'when asked about what was happening at the time, she'd given accounts about correcting mistaken deliveries and the like herself, to minimise inconvenience to others. Mrs Lynam had taken that to be commendable and beyond the call of duty. With hindsight, those incidents take on a very different presentation.' Of course they do. In fact, this is beyond corrupt. You can't just take public money that you've been entrusted with and use it for your own selfish and corrupt ends. Otherwise, you too could be in jail during all the great stuff still to come this year alone, including but not limited to Pam Dawber working with Robin Williams for the first time in 32 years, Brazil hosting South America's first World Cup since 1978 (which coincidentally was the year Dawber first worked with Robin Williams), Glasgow hosting Scotland's first Commonwealth Games since 1986 (which coincidentally was the year Dawber's second television series My Sister Sam premiered on CBS), and Gangnam Style hopefully reaching two billion views.