'Greedy' conwoman flees to Turkey after admitting £150,000 charity fraud

A conwoman boss has skipped the country and remains on the run in Turkey after stealing more than £150,000 from her charity and "effectively putting it out of business".

Donna Wells has brazenly jetted out of the UK only two days before she was due to face justice over her long-running campaign of fraud and is believed to remain abroad.

The "greedy" conwoman transferred tens of thousand of pounds out of her employers' bank account and into that of her friend's butty van, as well as swiping cash and purchasing gift vouchers for herself using the company credit card, reports the Liverpool Echo. Liverpool Crown Court heard this afternoon (June 5), that the 40-year-old pinched a total of £159,862 from Young Addaction Halton over a period of around 20 months in 2018 and 2019.

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Simon Christie, prosecuting, described how Wells first joined the charity - which was based at Grangeway Community Centre in Runcorn and offered support to young people addicted to drugs and alcohol, as well as those suffering from mental health issues - as service manager in 2014.

She was "placed in a position of trust" in the organisation, including approving invoices, as part of this role. But an investigation sparked by a whistleblower in December 2020 found that she had exploited this position by making dozens of bogus transfers into business accounts linked to her and her friend's husband Francis Jones.

This included 17 invoices to her co-defendant's mobile catering company, Jones' Butty Bar, totalling £42,800 - £28,100 of which was then sent back to her personally. Other payments were made to a beauticians, with little or no evidence of services having been provided by the