By Paul Higgins

Copyright irishmirror

A woman who put local GP services in jeopardy when she swindled more than £60,000 (approximately €68,750) from the practice to fund her gambling addiction has been handed a suspended jail sentence. The doctors defrauded by Seainin Genevieve Cutter looked on from the public gallery of Antrim Crown Court as the 27-year-old was handed a 20-month jail sentence on Tuesday. Judge Philip Gilpin told the fraudster, however, that after “careful consideration,” and taking account of the detrimental impact on her three children if she was sent to prison, he would suspend the sentence for three years, reports Belfast Live . He told Cutter it was as a direct result of her multiplicity of frauds that half of the GPs at the Roe Family Medical Practice resigned their jobs and one had delayed his retirement. “I have absolutely no doubt in this case that your offending has caused significant harm and it has caused harm to a great many people,” Judge Gilpin told her. At an earlier hearing, Cutter, from Harvest Meadows in Greysteel in Co Derry , entered guilty pleas to a total of 16 dishonesty offences, including 13 counts of fraud by abuse of position and single charges of fraud by false representation, forgery and having articles connected with fraud. The details of the charges disclose how Cutter had “fake email accounts and email conversations, for use in the course of or in connection with a fraud” and that she “dishonestly abused her position” by presenting various invoices for payment, all of which contained her bank details. The invoices -for various amounts ranging from £660 (approximately €750) up to £13,652 (approximately €15,650) – relate to supposed payments to office supply companies, the Western Trust, Fintastic Aquarium and a recruitment company. Other charges describe how Cutter made “inflated timesheet claims” and also that she forged a timesheet purportedly signed by a doctor, with all of the offending committed between February 1 and May 19, 2023. During his sentencing remarks on Tuesday, Judge Gilpin outlined that in circumstances where the practice manager had left her job at the Roe Family Medical Practice, the four GP partners decided to use a recruitment company to employ a reception manager in an effort to fill that administrative hole. Through Routledge Recruitment, Cutter began employment on 10 January, 2023 and within a few weeks, she suggested she should be given the additional responsibility of monitoring the practice manager’s email account. The frauds were uncovered the following May when Dr McGarry, one of the practice partners, discovered “a number of disturbing discrepancies in the funds of the practice” and when she looked into them, they were all attributable to Cutter. That sparked a police investigation which established that Cutter had been abusing her position of trust in a variety of ways, directing payments to herself. Judge Gilpin outlined how Cutter changed payment and bank details on invoices which came in, directing payments to her bank account. Those payments included multiple £13,000 (approximately €14,900) payments the practice had to pay the local health trust in rent, payments to a locum doctor, payments for renting fish and the aquarium they lived in and bills for stationery and printing equipment. In other frauds, the court heard, Cutter lodged inflated time sheets so that she would be paid for hours which she had not worked. Judge Gilpin outlined that in an effort to cover up and facilitate the frauds, Cutter created fake email addresses and forged doctors’ signatures. The court also heard that, having changed payment details to her own account, Cutter would hand invoices to the GPs, the bills written out in red that they needed to be paid immediately. Judge Gilpin told the court that overall, the frauds amounted to £63,120 (approximately €72,330) and had resulted in two of the four doctors resigning from the practice and that in turn, had affected patient services. Indeed, the doctor who had to put his retirement plans on hold after Cutter’s frauds were discovered had written a victim impact statement where he detailed how her “actions threatened the very services of the practice”. Turning to the defendant and her background, Judge Gilpin said it was clear from the reports that she is a mother of three who, due to her involvement with a previous partner, had developed a gambling addiction. Indeed, he told the court that in one of the reports before him, Cutter had claimed she had hoped that “one big win” would enable her to pay back the stolen monies. The judge heard, however, that Cutter is now reliant on benefits so will not be able to make full restitution for the money she swindled. In addition to the suspended jail sentence, Judge Gilpin did impose a compensation order of £15,000 (approximately €17,200) payable in the next three years. In a statement after the plea and sentence, Detective Inspector Lavery commented: “This case demonstrates how positions of trust can be abused. Cutter stole more than £60,000 (approximately €68,750) from her employer, a GP practice that serves the people of Limavady. “This loss has not only had an impact on the individual GPs but additionally the medical service they provide and could have placed vulnerable and unwell persons at risk. “Her conviction and sentencing we hope should reassure the wider community that fraud will be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.” Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here.