Sixth-former on work experience stole thousands from top law firm in cheque scam

A sixth who stole thousands of pounds while on work experience with a top international law firm was jailed for five months yesterday.

Within three days of joining Freshfields, Titilayo Olaifa used the computer system to generate company cheques.

She forged her boss’s signatures and paid them into her bank.

Southwark Crown Court in London heard that two cheques for a total of £13,500 were processed and the money withdrawn before the City-based firm realised what was happening.

Olaifa, 19, of Clapton, East London, pleaded guilty to theft and fraud last June. She is now doing a management degree at Essex University.

Olaifa sobbed as Judge Martin Beddoe said that while he had ‘sought very hard’ not to disrupt her ‘there is no other method of dealing with you other than by a custodial sentence’.

The judge added she would serve her sentence in a young offenders’ institution.

The teenager then became hysterical and had to be prevented from leaving the dock and going to her distraught mother in the public gallery.

Eventually she was restrained and taken to the cells below. 

The court heard that Olaifa was just 15 when she was assigned for a couple of weeks to Freshfields, which has 2,400 lawyers in 18 countries.

She impressed her colleagues so much that when she asked for another short-term placement three years later, they readily agreed.

She refused to tell police what had happened to the money, none of which has been recovered.

But she claimed to a probation officer that her then boyfriend forced her to betray her bosses, took the money she obtained and then disappeared with every penny.

The judge said that while he accepted someone else was involved he had ‘serious doubts’ that she was forced into crime.

In fact, considering her crimes began just 72 hours after returning to the law firm, it seemed to him she ‘went back with this in mind’.

He continued: ‘The fact is you made the choice to do as you did and really no one else is to blame. It was a very clear and determined course of conduct.

‘Where the money has gone, you have chosen not to say. I find it hard to think you have got nothing out of this offending.’