A WOMAN paid to help oversee accounts for a rail company has been convicted of defrauding the business of £36,781.

Corina Heslop was yesterday found guilty of eight counts of fraud against her former employer, British American Rail Services (Bars), which runs Weardale Railway, in County Durham, and other heritage lines across the country.

A jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on all eight charges at the end of the 12th day of her trial at Durham Crown Court.

The 42-year-old former management accountant made eight Bars cheque payments, for sums between £1,696 and £7,238, into her own credit card accounts during 2009.

In each case, she purported to be paying company creditors for services and supplies, altering invoices and other documents to make it appear the money was paid to the suppliers.

Heslop, who denied all eight charges, said she was reimbursing herself for payments made from her own funds to meet the most pressing creditors on behalf of the company.

She said she made cash payments straight to the creditors’ banks from a £100,000 inheritance that she kept in the attic at her home in Rookhope Grove, Bishop Auckland.

Heslop said she was keeping the money to help pay for her wedding, in the autumn of 2009.

She is also accused of entering the company offices, in portable buildings alongside Stanhope Railway Station, in County Durham, and damaging computer equipment to remove data in April 2010, several weeks after she left the company.

Heslop denied criminal damage and possessing articles for use in fraud, company documents found at her home after her arrest in April 2010.

Following the guilty verdicts on the eight fraud charges, Judge Christopher Prince sent the jury home overnight to continue deliberation on the two remaining accounts today.

Heslop’s husband, James Raymond Heslop, 45, also of Rookhope Grove, denied criminal damage and possessing items for use in fraud. Formal not guilty verdicts were returned by the jury on both charges, after directions by the judge, following submissions by Mr Heslop’s barrister, Scott Smith.

The case continues.