Tamworth restaurant manager jailed for stealing £20,000
A woman who fled to Spain to avoid trial for stealing £20,000 from her employers and trying to cover up the theft was jailed for 14 months today.
Sarah Hunt, 34, pocketed the money in May 2002 while working as a manager at two restaurants in West Midlands leisure complexes and then falsified accounts to cover her tracks.
While awaiting trial in January 2004, she absconded and was believed by police to have headed for the Costa Del Sol region of Spain.
With the help of Interpol, officers from West Midlands Police managed to contact Hunt a number of times by phone to invite her back to the UK but on each occasion she failed to return.
Detectives said she also changed her name to Sarah Hopkins and appeared to move on after each call.
Hunt, from Tamworth, Staffordshire, was arrested on January 20 this year in Malaga, Spain, after pictures of her were circulated on the Most Wanted list of charity Crimestoppers UK's website.
After four weeks in a Spanish jail, she returned to the UK and pleaded guilty to theft, false accounting and breach of bail.
