THE WOMAN who stole £95,000 from the doctors surgery she worked at must repay £75,000 - and sell her house.
Newnham and Westbury-on-Severn surgery manager Sharon Head must give half of what her family home in Blakeney is worth back to the practice that she ripped off for years.
She was jailed for two years and nine months in December after admitting nine counts of fraud and false accounting.
At Gloucester Crown Court His Honour Judge Jamie Tabor QC approved an application under the Proceeds of Crime Act that she repay £75,875 - half the value of the home she shared with her husband and daughter.
She overpaid herself over a six-and-a-half year period when the surgery was struggling with increasing paperwork, and ramped up her pay to more than £25 an hour, a previous hearing was told.
She even attended meetings where staff complained they hadn't had a pay rise for several years
Head, of Millend, Blakeney, admitted nine counts of fraud and false accounting totalling £95,422.32 in December and then the court heard the 43-year-old had worked at the surgery since she was 16.
Her fraud emerged when significant discrepancies in her pay slips were noticed by a doctor while she was on sick leave.
From December 2005 to July 2012, Head fraudulently claimed overtime totalling a sum of £36,658.81 and awarded herself unauthorised pay rises, including one of 16.4 per cent, totalling £58,763.51.
Gloucestershire police's financial investigation unit had wanted more than half the equity in the home, as the force said she had contributed four times as much to the mortgage as her husband.
But at Thursday's hearing, the judge agreed that half of the value of the house will be repaid to the surgery.
"If it is not paid within six months you will be back here," said Judge Tabor.
"If it is not paid within a reasonable period after that, unless there is a very good reason, you will serve longer and still pay the money. I suspect it will depend on the house sale."
