Our former employee Dale Mills, age 37, has been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 32 months in prison.

Dale was part of our Finance team and had been a highly-regarded member of staff prior to his resignation in December 2016.

At Liverpool Crown Court yesterday Dale was charged with defrauding our charity of almost £120,000 over a four-year period.  The specific charges were:

  • Fraud by abuse of position
  • Fraud under the Fraud Act 2006
  • A charge of false accounting lies on file

Robin Bush, CEO of Autism Together, said:

“We were deeply shocked to uncover Dale’s fraud and are very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused to the families and service users we support. We have made sure that no-one has been disadvantaged by Dale’s actions and our organisation’s finances remain robust.

“As you would expect from an organisation working in the social care sector, at Autism Together we always put people first – our staff, our service users and our families. That makes it all the more upsetting when someone we felt we knew well takes advantage of a position of trust.

“We want to reassure our whole community that our organisation is in good financial health and that the day-to-day lives of the people we care for are not affected. Life at Autism Together continues as usual and we have much to look forward to over the coming months.

“We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Merseyside Police for their extremely lengthy and detailed investigation and also to our finance team who have worked diligently to understand the extent of Dale’s actions.”

We have set up contacts within our organisation for any families needing additional reassurance and our training team have developed support materials to help staff explain what has happened to any service users who may be concerned.