Married man stole £46,000 from boss to give to online lover in ‘mid-life crisis’
A married love rat has avoided jail after fraudulently sending nearly £50,000 to his online lover – because he was also a victim.
Alan Falkner, 54, stole from his employer to buy and send Amazon gift vouchers to a ‘woman’ he met over the internet.
He helped himself to a total of £46,000 from engine manufacturer Lombardini between 2017 and 2020, a court heard.
But his ‘mid-life crisis’ mistress turned out to be a honeytrap fraudster who had tricked him into sending her thousands.
Giving him a suspended prison sentence at Oxford Crown Court, Recorder John Hardy said: ‘You were the victim of a crime.
‘You fell into the embrace of a scammer, as they are now known, who took you as a man of middle age, perhaps in the latter stages of middle age, at a point in time when during a man’s life he is vulnerable to aspirations which are beyond him.’
He added: ‘The aspirations can be summed up under the headline of “mid-life crisis”.
‘As a result of being a victim of crime, you yourself committed a crime and defrauded your employers of over £46,000.’
Earlier, the judge told Falkner: ‘This is a very sad case. Other than that which brings you before this court, you’ve led a decent, honest, respectable life, working hard, being a valued colleague, being a valued husband and a valued father.’
Falkner has so far repaid around half of the stolen funds, with almost £26,000 left to pay.
Recorder Hardy said he felt able to suspend the jail term because Falkner had paid back some of the money ‘frittered away over a quite significantly long period of utter emotional madness’.
‘I express the hope, Mr Falkner, that you will return to the bosom of your family and that this adventure into the world of the criminal justice system will be your very last experience of that system,’ the judge said.
Leanne Ballato, mitigating, told the judge Falkner had a ‘mid-life crisis’ and had got a tattoo, but stopped short of buying a motorcycle.
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