She cheated on her husband with personal trainer - then used his bank account to steal thousands from her boss

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', 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.

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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 to 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 and became the firm's lettings manager at the Rochdale branch.

But her crimes began to unravel when some landlords complained that they had not received their rental payments and they were only paid by Barker when they they 'persisted' that money was missing. The firm's owners, the Tweedley family, carried out an investigation and realised 'significant' sums of money were missing, said Mr Williamson.

The court heard Barker was married to the manager of the Middleton branch, Paul