AN “extremely manipulative” employee who fleeced a respected Harrow hotel must pay back £45,000 by August.

Mary Claire Povoa used her position as a trusted member of staff at the Grims Dyke Hotel to con more than £60,000 through a scam so clever even the IT team thought it was a problem with their computers.

Povoa, of Arundel Drive, South Harrow, billed customers but then deleted all record of their stay from the system and refunded the money to her own account.

PC Martin Greaves, of Harrow Police, said: “She's a clever operator. She's an extremely manipulative individual.

“She's certainly got charisma and she's conned an awful lot of people into assuming that she's kosher, but sadly she's as bent as a nine bob note.”

She raked in thousands through the fraud and even had her engagement party at the hotel, in Old Redding, Harrow Weald, for free using the system.

But she was caught after a full audit exposed an abnormally large number of refunds and found she was involved in most of them.

She was jailed for two-and-a-half years in July and on Wednesday last week was dragged back to Harrow Crown Court as police applied to claim back the money she made.

She was ordered to cough up £45,000 by August or face another year-and-a-half in jail, and she will be shackled with the rest of her debt plus interest until it is repaid.

The £45,000 will be handed to the hotel as compensation.