Charlton man steals £200,000 from charity

A man from Charlton has been convicted of stealing £200,000 from a charity to fund a gambling habit.

Manjinder Virdi, 37, of Rathmore Road was jailed for three years on Monday 14 February.

Police state: “Virdi joined the charity, based in Poplar, in May 2015. He was appointed as a financial administrator and later promoted to finance officer.”

His role involved various financial and accountancy functions, allowing him access to the company bank and PayPal accounts.

On Monday, 20 May 2019 another member of staff at the charity received an email from their bank about potentially fraudulent activity in their accounts.

As the finance officer, the email was forwarded to Virdi and he was asked to look into it. He claimed that he had spoken to the bank and that it was a scam email which should be ignored.

A day later the same colleague asked Virdi again to check that the email was a scam. He replied that he had spoken to the bank and been informed there had been some fraudulent activity, but that the bank were going to contact him directly with the details.

However, unknown to Virdi, the charity’s Vice President had become suspicious and contacted the bank and was now aware that a number of payments had been made into Virdi’s accounts.”

Police were called and established that Virdi had transferred £200,000 into his personal bank accounts with thousands of pounds in deposits to online gambling websites.

Attempts to recover finds are ongoing.