Secret Millionaire star | Employee's £35k theft leaves founder bankrupt and staff jobless

A business founder who appeared on the show Secret Millionaire, was forced to sell his company and lay off six employees, after a newly employed accounts assistant fraudulently stole £35,000 from the business.

Aria Taheri, founder of Manchester-based Velo Systems, said that the fraudulent assistant accountant, Sarah Cunningham, “left a trail of destruction” that led him to selling his business at a loss and laying off six employees.

Cunningham had been working for the company for less than a month when she started to transfer large sums of money from the company account into another account.

She had access to the firm’s banking system but had to seek approval to make payments. As a result, she set up an account with a similar name to a supplier the company often works with, to try and disguise where the money was going.