A FRAUDSTER who took advantage of his boss’s serious illness to steal from her was unmasked by a sordid affair.

Married Douglas McAllister used his work email account to send saucy messages to a fellow employee 14 years his junior.

Not only did the church deacon use the company credit card to treat his mistress, he also left their sex tapes in the office in a box marked ‘To Do’.

The message exchange was uncovered during a routine audit – and led to his employers finding out he had embezzled almost £43,000 from their company.

It turned out McAllister, from Eaglesham, had been writing cheques to cash and diverting BACS transfers from customers to his personal account.

In their office, Karen and Michael Deutsch also found a video camera belonging to McAllister.

When they checked the camera’s memory card they found footage of McAllister – who plays the organ in his church – having sex with his mistress.

Father-of-three McAllister was brought in as financial director of Glasgow fabric store Mandors, a family-run business.

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In 2007 owner Mrs Deutsch had suffered an aneurysm and McAllister, who had been the firm’s auditor, was brought in-house to help.

Mrs Deutsch, who opened Mandors in 1977 with her husband, said: “Douglas had been our auditor and we trusted him so we employed him to take over the financial side of the business in 2007.

“All the time he was there I kept saying to him, ‘It’s great having you here, Douglas, we can’t manage without you,’ and all the time he was stealing from us.”

Mrs Deutsch’s ill health continued, with a bout of bronchitis in July 2013 and then in October that year she was diagnosed with heart failure.

Sadly, her mother also died in July 2013 and so the family continued to rely on McAllister’s help running the firm.

But at the end of the financial year 2014, the accounts showed Mandors had made a loss of £50,000.

Mrs Deutsch also noticed that the company expenses were much higher than usual and there was an increased use of the company credit card.

Mrs Deutsch said: “We had been trading successfully since we set up the business in 1977 and it was the first time we had made such a loss, so alarm bells started ringing.

“I wasn’t well enough but our losses were so great that I came back in to work to ask questions again.

“Douglas was now in charge of all the cheque books and bank accounts and had a company credit card.”

Meanwhile, Mrs Deutsch carried out a routine audit of the company email accounts – and was appalled by what she found.

She added: “I’m the administrator for the Mandors email accounts and carry out regular checks on them. I found in Douglas’s account a Whatsapp conversation that was pornographic and between him and one of our ex members of staff.

“This was a married man with three children. I found a second one and it was filthy, disgusting.

“But just because he was having an affair didn’t mean there was anything else wrong. I didn’t know what to do – should I tell Mike or not?”

Mrs Deutsch made the decision to tell her husband.

She said: “Mike was out walking with a friend who said, ‘In my experience, a married man would use a company credit card to pay for things that he doesn’t want his wife to find out about. Karen, go back and look through his credit card receipts.’”

When she did, the business owner found unexplained receipts for an overnight stay in the Dakota hotel, dinner for “an enormous amount” at Loch Green House and a £1200 lawnmower.

It is believed the sex tape, which the Evening Times has seen, was filmed in the Dakota.

There was also a receipt for an oven delivered to McAllister’s home address, the accountant had taxed his wife’s car, bought a car, and there were receipts for Vodaphone contracts and mobile phones.

After taking advice from a solicitor, Mrs Deutsch confronted McAllister.

She said: “He said he had made a terrible mistake and used the wrong credit card.

“He said, ‘Please forgive me, give me another chance. I’ll pay back the money, just let me keep my job.’

“We suspended him on full pay and he gave me back the credit card and shop keys. He left and then we started looking into what else he had been up to.”

The fallout has put Mr and Mrs Deutsch through the ordeal of police interviews and left them paying back short-changed suppliers, who Mrs Deutsch said have been “very understanding”.

Mrs Deutsch added: “The first thing that happened after he left was I had to come back in and work full time. I certainly was not back to full health and this has been an added stress and strain.

“I was left wondering how I would ever trust anyone again.

“Financial year 2015 showed a loss because of the things he had been up to and the amount of money he had embezzled. But we have turned a corner and are back into making a profit.

“It is unbelievable the things he had done. It’s constant – I always have it on my mind, it’s very upsetting.”

Mrs Deutsch was in court on Thursday to see McAllister appear.

As told in yesterday’s Evening Times, the 48-year-old pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to stealing £42,395.93 from Mandors between February 20 2012 to November 17 2014.

While she could barely look at the man who destroyed her trust, she said that she understood he had had his “own troubles.”

After the Evening Times spoke with McAllister, his solicitor, Ross Yuill, said he had advised his client to make no comment.