Trickster sent down in CV fraud

Inprise (formerly Borland) and Wyse Technology have fallen victim to a con artist who defrauded the vendors out of nearly #90,000.

From January 1995 to May 1997, Ruth Ferraro was employed at Borland as finance manager, but was jailed on 12 November after admitting to obtaining a pecuniary advantage in relation to CV fraud and false accounting, which led to the vendor losing #87,919. Wyse lost just #716 when it employed Ferraro as director of finance and administration EMEA in June last year.

The case, which was heard at Reading Crown Court, revealed that Ferraro had obtained one O-level and received accounting experience as a trainee at Racal Electronics, but did not have a qualification in the subject.

From June 1995 to November 1997, Ferraro was able to manually issue cheques of up to #15,000, which were paid into her own account and covered up with forged invoices.

Inprise stated: 'Like all companies, we do our utmost to ensure the honesty of employees and deter any form of fraud. We were shocked when we discovered we were the innocent victims of fraud by someone we had grown to trust.'

But a recruitment consultant said: 'For someone to have got through so many loops without any checks seems odd.'

Ferraro was jailed for a year for CV fraud, with a further 30 months for other charges. She was ordered to pay #30,000 in compensation, as well as the proceeds of selling a Ferrari which she bought with the money gained during the period.

Wyse Technology was unavailable for comment.