A finance boss is facing a lengthy jail term after pleading guilty to theft charges.

Sharon Bridgewater, a lapsed CIMA student, concealed a criminal past to get the FD job at Bloomsbury-based marketing company Hicklin Slade & Partners, before she started dipping into the coffers, Southwark Crown Court heard this week.

Back in 1996, she plead guilty to eight false accounting offences relating to the theft of £25,000 while an accounts manager at Dyna-Five, a computer hardware firm in Epsom, but only received 150 hours community service.

In the current case, the court heard how she used the ill-gotten gains to buy a 'jaw-dropping' collection of cars including six Porsches, a £90,000 state-of-the-art entertainment system and similar amounts on luxury holidays and expensive furniture.

Having illegally taken £2m from Hicklin Slade, she handed in her notice and took a job at radio recording company Universal Sound Principles, where she stole £55,000, the prosecution said.

Her crimes were only exposed after Hicklin Slade turned to auditors to help identify why their company was in such a 'parlous financial state'.

Bridgewater plead guilty to 16 counts of theft between August 1999 and May 2005.

She also admitted two charges of furnishing false information and one of perverting the course of justice by attempting to hide assets following a High Court freezing order after her arrest.

She is due to be sentenced on 26 October.

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