A heartless former hospice nurse who embezzled thousands of pounds from a disabled children’s charity to fund his out of control gambling habit has dodged a jail sentence.
Alan Thorburn was a volunteer for charity Dreamflight, which takes seriously ill children on a holiday-of-a-lifetime to Florida. He stole more than £17,000 by transferring money from accounts connected to the charity to his personal bank account.
The 40-year-old, from Tranent, East Lothian, was confronted by charity managers after sums of cash raised by public fundraising events had gone missing.
He pled guilty to a charge of embezzlement between January 2015 and March 2018 at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on September 3. At his sentencing hearing today, Thorburn avoided a jail term.
The callous ex-nurse was handed a community payback order for his crimes and was ordered to perform 280 hours of unpaid work.
The court heard that Thorburn started working with the charity around 2014 and had been given a role as one of two regional organisers for the east of Scotland. He was given a bank card and granted online access to the charity’s fundraising savers account.
Later, one of Thorburn’s colleagues noticed that the fundraising account’s number and sort code had changed. When she raised the matter with him, the accused claimed Barclays had set up an alternative account without consulting him and agreed to close it down.
In February 2018, another charity worker queried the amount of money raised from a fundraising ball. An internal investigation revealed that money had been transferred into the account Thorburn had previously said he would close.
It was subsequently discovered that cash paid into that account had quickly been transferred into Thorburn’s own bank account. In total, it was found that £17,106 had been misappropriated from the charity. Thorburn has since repaid the full amount.
Lynne Barrie, Procurator Fiscal for Lothian and Borders, blasted Thorburn’s actions. She said: “This was a shocking breach of trust by an employee who was responsible for managing funds raised by a children’s charity.
“The money which Alan Thorburn stole was donated by members of the public in good faith, intended to be used to take children with a serious illness or disability on a holiday of a lifetime. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service is committed to tackling financial crime and ensuring that those who commit offences against vulnerable individuals are brought to justice.”
Dreamflight was co-founded in 1986 by Patricia Pearce and Derek Pereira who, previously worked with British Airways and had helped raise money for underprivileged children.
The charity’s first trip to Orlando took place in November 1987 and to date more than 6,000 children have now experienced their ‘”holiday of a lifetime”.
Dreamflight take around 190 children from across the UK on board their privately-hired aircraft, along with a volunteer team of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and other helpers look after the children for 10 days. Since 2021, Dreamflight has also taken small groups of seriously ill and disabled children to fully-accessible activity centres in the UK.
The Record has contacted Dreamflight for comment.
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