The theft of almost £100,000 from the St Michael’s Hotel in Falmouth by a “trusted” accounts assistant, not only jeopardised colleagues’ livelihoods, but also put the entire business at risk.

Lisa Thompson, 48, was jailed for 15 months at Truro Crown Court on Friday after she admitted two charges of false accounting and fraud by abuse of position. The offences relate to a period between September 2008 and June 2013 when she had worked at the hotel.

The court heard that Thompson had arranged for the hotel to pay a total of £98,438 into her own bank account by falsifying employee details. She has not been ordered to pay the hotel any compensation or any prosecution costs or victim surcharge. The mother-of-three, of Tresawle Road, Falmouth, is only likely to serve half of the prison term.

Upon hearing of Thompson’s sentence, Nigel Carpenter, pictured left, owner of the St Michael’s Hotel and Spa, reacted angrily to her betrayal and the position her dishonestly had placed his business and his employees in.

“We are a family business that have invested significantly in growing St Michaels and expanding our number of full time jobs from c 60 in 2003 to c 110 today,” he said. “We play an active part in the community, and put a great deal of effort into supporting our staff – including staff welfare with no interest loans, compassionate leave etc.

“It is therefore very traumatic to find that a long term employee who has been placed in a position of high trust has been stealing from the company in a considered way over many years.

“She has stolen our money, put the business at risk and threatened the livelihoods of all St Michaels’ employees and community.

“Managers will have failed to meet their labour cost targets and potentially been unfairly judged as a result. The staff affected will have had their personal tax and financial affairs interfered with in a harmful way. The loss of funds meant the business could not invest as it would have liked and, at times, potentially struggled to make bank loan re-payments.

“My own family has suffered a significant loss of income.

“We are not a sufficiently large business to keep auditing and checking on employees, and so a certain amount of trust is inevitable. In this case, it was someone who we thought we knew and who had worked for us for many years.

“The betrayal of the whole St Michaels’ community, impacting on over 100 families who struggle to meet their own commitments, has been hard to come to terms with. We are all deeply saddened by what has happened.”

In court on Friday, prosecutor Elaine Hobson said Thompson had been caught after a student working at the hotel believed she had been paying too much tax and had been due a rebate.

She said the scheme was then “unravelled” and it was found by the hotel that Thompson, who had been responsible for processing information from manually completed staff sheets, had been inputting false employment details over “a long period of time” and diverting money to her own bank account.

When she was asked to give an account of herself, Thompson admitted what she had done, claiming she had “found she could manufacture certain accounts to benefit herself,” and gave full details to her employers of how she did it.

Frederick Howell, defending Thompson, who has lived in the Falmouth area all her life, said she had separated from her third husband as a result of the investigation.

He said she had been “under financial pressure” when started the fraud, and it “snowballed from there,” adding she is “sorry for what she has done” and had co-operated fully with the investigation.

Ms Hobson said Devon and Cornwall Police’s financial investigations unit had been contacted, and had found that Thompson had no assets, so they could not carry out any investigation in the case.