A PUB landlady duped a cancer charity for more than £1,000 when she kept donations from a Go Sober event for herself.

Rebecca Toogood, 44, of Newbury, held on to donations made for MacMillan Cancer Support’s Go Sober event in October 2019 during her time as the landlady of the Butler & Hops pub in the High Street, Poole.

She was convicted at Winchester Crown Court for one count of theft and one count of fraud by false representation. She was sentenced at the same court.

The crown’s case, put to the court by John Ojakovoh, was that Toogood was entrusted with donations around the value of £1,500 intended for MacMillan Cancer Support.

Donations were made to the defendant for a regular, Eddie Johnson, to go sober throughout October. A second pot was also donated.

The theft, committed between October 1 and December 30, relates to Toogood taking the money and agreeing to pay it to MacMillan and keeping to for herself.

The fraud arises from the same set of circumstances, when Toogood said she’d pay the money to the charity and being entrusted to do so, but never actually completing the transaction. Mr Ojakovoh said she claimed she did pay the money.

Mitigating, Tamasin Graham said she was acting as a friend and not through her role as the landlady.

She said the exact value was not known and was no higher than £1,500.

Ms Graham said Toogood never sought the role of collecting the money, but it was “forced upon her”.

She added: “This did not have a detrimental effect, the sum is a drop in the ocean [for Macmillan], it must be lesser harm."

Recorder Don Tait sentenced Toogood to 18 months imprisonment for the theft and four months for the fraud, to run concurrently, suspended for two years.

She was ordered to carry out 100 hours unpaid work and pay £1,500 in compensation.

Mr Tait said: “The message has to go out that these offences are serious. There are many people up and down the country who give their time an effort to raise money for good causes. In this case it was MacMillan, one of the best causes in this country.

“I hope these proceedings have served as a warning to you as to how to behave in the future."

Bob Browell, counter fraud manager at MacMillan, said after the hearing that the charity can now use the money to support people who need it most. He said the charity became aware of the offences when Mr Johnson didn’t receive a thank you letter for his efforts.

“The judge’s words were absolutely spot on and in keeping with what we believe,” Mr Browell said.

“This was achieved through a private prosecution. We took that route to get justice for our supporters.

"It doesn't happen every day but when we are we take it very seriously.”

Steve Clayton, chief financial officer, said: “It is vital that the public have confidence that their donations are going to help people living with cancer.

“While we have robust systems in place to prevent wrongdoing and fraud is thankfully rare, we take any abuse of our supporters’ trust extremely seriously and will continue to take action where necessary.

"We remain hugely grateful to everyone who is raising money to help us provide vital cancer support services at a time when people need us more than ever.”