The former business manager of an addiction and mental health charity for teens and young adults in England has begun serving a four-year prison sentence for stealing approximately $200,000 from the organization.
The 41-year-old woman had been on the lam for eight months until the long arm of the law caught up with her last month in Turkey, where she fled after failing to appear in court this past December. British police subsequently worked with Turkish authorities to have her extradited back to England.
Donna Wells had previously been responsible for approving vouchers and invoice payments for Young Addaction Halton, a charity in northwest England’s Cheshire County. She was suspended from her position in December 2019 after cash went missing and managers became aware of payments to unknown suppliers and unauthorized credit card charges dating back nearly two years.
An audit later turned up dozens of unexplained transfer payments to three personal bank accounts in Wells’ name and to a fourth account registered to the business of a friend’s husband through which she had laundered additional money. Cheshire County police pegged the total amount of stolen funds at approximately £150,000 in British currency, equal to about $200,000 in U.S. dollars based on exchange rates at the time.
Wells went missing after failing to appear for a December 2022 court hearing. She was convicted in absentia this past June and sentenced to four years in prison for fraud by false representation and acquiring criminal property between January 2018 and January 2020. She has since had an additional four weeks tacked on to her sentence for breaching bail. Her friend’s husband was given a suspended 15-month prison sentence and ordered to complete 100 hours of community service for his role in the scheme.
The charity Wells worked for was the local affiliate of a national British charity that rebranded to a new name in January 2020, one month after the theft was discovered. A press release announcement by the national organization, now known as We Are With You, touted the name change as part of a commitment to removing the stigma surrounding addiction and mental health and to working with clients as equal partners.
A spokesperson for the national organization declined to say if the rebranding’s timing was in any way related to the theft but released a statement to The NonProfit Times on behalf of the organization’s leadership.
“We deeply regret that fraud occurred in one of our services and we take this matter very seriously,” they said. “It is unacceptable to manipulate a system in place to support some of society’s most vulnerable groups for personal gain.”
Leaders said they have since taken additional steps to prevent such incidents from recurring. “Following the loss of funds, our staff continued to run services utilizing the organization’s reserve funds to do so,” they said.
We Are With You most recently reported annual income of £64.5 million (approximately $80 million), according to the Charity Commission for England and Wales.
