A beautician convicted of a £20,000 fraud has failed in a bid to have her sentence and conviction overturned after lawyers withdrew the appeal on her behalf.
arah Louise Middlesworth, also known as Sarah Diamond, was convicted of two counts of money-laundering and six fraud charges but launched an appeal after vowing to clear her name.
However, when the matter was due to be heard at the Court of Appeal in Belfast on Thursday her legal team asked for the case to be withdrawn.
As a result Middlesworth, from Lisburn, Co Antrim, had her convictions and three-month suspended sentence upheld.
At her sentencing in May the court was told Middlesworth had acquired criminal property in the form of two payments totalling £9,750 to her Danske Bank account on April 16, 2018, before going on to make a series of dodgy withdrawals.
On April 19 and 20 of that year she made six fraudulent withdrawals at various locations in Belfast and Lisburn worth a total of £9,647.
Prosecutors said the mum-of-two had admitted allowing her account to be used “at the request of a long-standing friend whom she did name and who told her he had been having problems accessing his bank account”.
When she was initially sentenced earlier this year Middlesworth avoided an immediate prison sentence because she’s a mother-of-two.
Her solicitor Michael Boyd pleaded with Deputy District Judge Austin Kennedy not to send her to jail because she has two children at home.
Handing her a suspended sentence Judge Kennedy was scathing about Middlesworth’s version of events, telling the court he believed she was not being entirely truthful.
He said: “Ms Middlesworth, you were convicted on charges before this court and you are still saying you were genuinely duped into these offences.
“As I said at the time of the contest, I do not believe that and I believe you know more about this than you are letting on.
“This was a deception involving other parties and I do not for one minute accept you were duped, but that is for another day.
“You have two children at home and immediate custody would cause serious problems for them, but this was not a victimless crime and (the offences) clearly passed the custody threshold.
“But I am not going to give you immediate custody given your family circumstances.”
Her solicitor had earlier told the court she had suffered stress and anxiety as a result of the court case and because of Sunday Life’s coverage of the matter, which he labelled “unpleasant”.
Following her conviction after a contest in May, Sunday Life approached Middlesworth at her home where she vowed to clear her name during her appeal which she has now dropped.
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