Charity accountant stole over £500,000 to buy 105 car wrecks

A charity accountant bought 105 cars after stealing £560,000 from businesses linked to a Bristol hospital charity. Eccentric Brendan Joyce was an accountant for Above and Beyond, a charity raising money for the nine central Bristol hospitals, for 17 years.


Photo from SWNS.

Joyce, 57, usually shunned expensive models in favour of clapped-out wrecks. He stored them in 80 lock-up garages all over Bristol which cost him £4,200 a month to rent.



After he was sacked for forging the charity's fire alarm certificates, it transpired that over five and a half years he paid himself £562,029.51 from funds related to two companies and a charity swimming club for whom Above and Beyond managed accounts.



Bristol Crown Court heard that he bought the cars online. The money could have funded 20 nurses for a year, the court heard. Joyce, of Ridgeway Lane in Whitchurch, pleaded guilty to five charges of fraud and asked for 152 similar offences to be considered. He was jailed for three years. Judge Michael Roach set a Proceeds of Crime Application for December 6, when a hearing will take place into clawing back Joyce's ill-gotten gains.

With photo gallery.