The former finance chief of the Silverstone motor racing circuit was ordered yesterday to pay back more than £300,000 after being convicted of embezzling more than half a million pounds from the track's owners.
Between May 2002 and October 2004, Stephen Beattie used his position as financial controller of the British Racing Driving Club (BRDC) - the owners of the Northamptonshire track - to dupe officials into signing blank cheques.
Beattie (51), from Marsh Gibbon, Oxfordshire, was jailed at Northampton Crown Court in February this year for three years and seven months after being found guilty of ten specimen charges of obtaining money by deception.
At the same court yesterday, Beattie was ordered to repay £302,000 proceeds from his crimes.
He is in process of selling his £650,000 family home as well as a £16,000 Mercedes car and could face a further three years in prison if he defaults on the order.
Within a month of being appointed to his £29,000-a-year post with the BRDC, Beattie started stealing from his employers by duping officials into signing almost 40 blank cheques of up to £30,000 a time. The fraud, which totalled £502,462, finally ended when he was sacked because of unrelated concerns over his competency.
Beattie committed the offences was to pay off a large legal bill from his former employer and to sustain a lavish lifestyle. The HSBC bank footed the bill for the BRDC's loss after admitting some responsibility for not spotting the large number of cheques being made out to Beattie, who was sacked after the BRDC received a summons from the local council for an unpaid rates bill.
