A Wester Ross hotel general manager and his chef conspired to defraud the owner out of thousands of pounds by creating a fake employee and splitting the pay packet.
Inverness Sheriff Court heard that 45-year-old James McEachern hired a teenage family member to work for 30 days at the Balmacara Hotel in Kyle of Lochalsh but paid him £8,770.98 when he was only due £1,980.
A total of £18,226.16 was also paid into a bank account under the fictitious name of David Smith when it was actually the account for the hotel’s 53-year-old chef, Graham Smith.
The pair then split the money between them, fiscal depute Emily Hood told Sheriff Sara Matheson.
McEachern admitted embezzling £6,790.98 from the Spanish owner Victor Navarro between November 30 2018 and October 29 2019.
McEachern also pleaded guilty alongside Smith of creating a fraudulent scheme by inventing employee David Smith to induce Mr Navarro to pay them £18,226.16 between June 14 2019 and December 10 2019.
Sentence was deferred for background reports and restriction of liberty order assessments until March 23. Their bail was continued.
Con outlined to court
Ms Hood told the court: “Mr Navarro noticed that the money being paid out at the hotel in salaries was higher than he expected, as such he requested a copy of the payroll and further information from the accounting company.”
She added that another employee at the hotel, Juan Santos, met with Mr Navarro in Valencia at the end of October 2019 and Mr Santos confirmed who worked there and who didn’t.
“During this meeting it was discovered that payments were being made to a fictitious employee who had never worked there,” Ms Hood said.
Ms Hood added that Mr Santos was also able to confirm that the family relative had only worked there for 30 days.
McEachern, of Sealladh na Beinne, Fort William, and Smith, of Cearnag, Chabar Feidh, Broadford, were interviewed by police in November 2020 and they confessed to the financial offences.
Defence solicitors Natalie Paterson and Graham Mann reserved their comments until the date of sentencing.
Previous embezzlement case at Balmacara Hotel
James McEachern and Graham Smith aren’t the first crooked employees to have been hired to work at the Balmacara Hotel.
Marian Aitkenhead helped herself to more than £3,000 of the hotel’s cash between May 16 until July 1 2018.
Fiscal depute Emily Hood told Inverness Sheriff Court in June last year that Aitkenhead transferred £3,007 into her then partner’s bank account over a period of months.
When he saw the transaction, which he didn’t recognise, he quizzed her about it and was told it was perfectly legal and the hotel knew about it, Ms Hood said.
But further investigations revealed that the hotel knew nothing about the transfer and the police were informed.
