Kirsty Payne, a 44-year-old chartered accountant from Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, has been jailed after stealing more than £40,000 from her employer, refrigerated lorry service firm Marshall Thermo King, and spending it on a ski holiday in the French Alps. The mother-of-two, who earned around £80,000 a year, committed the fraud while already subject to a suspended sentence for a near-identical offence, prompting the court to impose a custodial term this time as a mark of her repeated dishonesty.

Payne inflated a supplier payment of £400,410 by £40,383 in February 2025 and diverted the excess into a family member's account. She confessed spontaneously during a wellbeing meeting with HR in April, though she initially told police the money had gone on a relative's medical treatment before admitting it funded the ski trip. She was jailed for 18 months at Peterborough Crown Court, comprising 10 months for the fraud and the remainder for breaching her earlier suspended sentence, and had already been banned from acting as a company director for 11 years over a separate £325,000 invoice fraud.