We all know someone who we believe is addicted to TikTok, but are those people stealing £300,000 from work to spend on tokens for their favourite content creators?
Katherine Greenall, 29, from St Helens, Liverpool, stole more than £400,000 from her workplace and blew £300,000 of it on TikTok coins, which are used to send virtual gifts to content creators during their live-streams and to support them financially.
Mum-of-two Katherine sobbed as she was told jail was the only punishment for the ‘massive’ fraud, committed against the car company where she worked as an accounts manager.
Greenall plundered £443,500 from the accounts of New Reg Ltd between February 2024 and April this year, and gave £300,000 of it away in hundreds of increments on the social media app.
She later admitted to police that gifting tokens to her favourite content creators ‘became an obsession’. I’ll say!
Paul Becker, defending, said she ‘may have been suffering from a form of addiction to TikTok’, adding: ‘What she was getting out of it was entertainment. That is where the majority of the money was going towards.’
Well, yeah, was definitely a ‘form of addition to TikTok.’ Although she did have an extra £100,000 to spend from they money she siphoned, which went on holidays, hotel stays, shopping, Amazon purchases and even a family solicitor, so I guess it wasn’t all wasted?
Still, I cannot believe she managed to blow £300,000 of it on TikTok. That’s almost unthinkable! It’s enough to buy a flat ffs!
Greenall pleaded guilty to a single charge of fraud by abuse of position and was jailed for 28 months, reports the Liverpool Echo.
She had started working at New Reg LTD as a customer service manager in April 2021 before being promoted to accounts manager in December the following year. She was viewed by bosses as a ‘vital part of the company’s growth’ and as someone who was ‘both trusted and respected’.
Greenall was able to steal the money by manipulating financial reports and diverting cash into her own bank account. All in all, she made 121 unauthorised transactions before bosses eventually confronted her over low profits.
She told her bosses she would investigate, but instead made a final payment of £20,000 into her own account and fled the office due to a ‘false family illness’.
Eventually, Greenall clean and was arrested.
Sad that her children have to deal with the consequences and that this will be a stain on her record forever, but at the end of the day, you’re always going to end up in prison for that level of fraud. And for what? To mostly line the pockets of TikTok creators? How depressing.
For the Yale admin busted for stealing $40 million over 10 years by ordering PCs for the company and selling them, click HERE.
