Love cheat mum fleeced her pals

LETTINGS AGENT WHO HAD AFFAIR WITH PERSONAL TRAINER STOLE UP TO £130K FROM FIRM

- JOHN SCHEERHOUT

A LETTINGS agent has been spared jail despite fleecing landlord clients and her bosses out of as much as £130,000.

Joanne Barker, 46, a mother from Rochdale, secretly defrauded dozens of clients of Barton Kendal, a lettings agent where she worked as the manager of its Rochdale office.

She siphoned money into her own accounts, her husband's and her personal trainer's - who she was having an affair with, a court heard.

Her crime left the owner of the well-regarded family business 'humiliated and embarrassed' and on the verge of a breakdown and the firm on the brink of bankruptcy.

But a judge spared Barker a prison sentence after hearing she was now a carer for her poorly mother.

Barker diverted rental income into her personal account, created fictitious landlords and invented remedial work, with the cash also going into her bank, between May 2014 and November 2018 when she was finally rumbled, prosecutor Patrick Williamson told Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court.

The defendant joined the family-owned company, which has offices in Rochdale and Middleton, in 2009.