A CANCER charity is to get more than £26,000 compensation from the fraudster who worked as its events manager.

Patricia Helen Robertshaw, 42, falsely claimed she had cancer herself as she cheated Yorkshire Cancer Research out of nearly £87,000, York Crown Court heard in March.

She had got her job with the Harrogate based charity with fake qualifications and obtained £19,300 in sick pay with fake sick notes.

Now she will have to sell her marital home or spend another 12 months in jail, York Crown Court heard.

She is currently serving four years and five months in prison for crimes against the charity and the students of a university she also used to work for.

The 42-year-old, of Gisburn Road, Barrowford near Burnley, admitted four charges of fraud and one of forgery earlier this year. After police investigated her finances, the CPS took her back to York Crown Court for an assets confiscation hearing.

Philip Standfast, prosecuting, said Robertshaw had benefited by £26,207 from her crimes and had assets worth £55,000 including the equity in her marital home.

Recorder Graeme Cook made a compensation order requiring her to pay £26,207 to the charity within three months, or spend 12 months more in jail.

Robertshaw’s barrister Andrew Semple said: “There is likely to be a house sale.”

When the judge asked why the sum sought in compensation, as decided by the CPS and a police investigation, was more than £60,000 less than the total fraud, Mr Standfast said that was due to Robertshaw’s promotion.

It was, he said, impossible to say to what extent the promotion was due to the false qualifications and how much was due to Robertshaw’s work for the charity.

In March, York Crown Court heard the promotion won Robertshaw a £10,000 salary increase.

She started working for the charity in September 2015 and by autumn 2016 was claiming she herself had cancer.

While sending in fake sick notes and claiming she was undergoing radiotherapy, she was applying for two more jobs using the fake qualifications.

Her total pay from the charity during her employment, including sick pay, was £86,833.

Detective Constable Shane Martin, of North Yorkshire Police, said in March: “This is the most abhorrent fraud case I have investigated in 25 years of being a police officer.

“It’s absolutely incomprehensible that anyone could lie about having such a serious illness.

“Everything about the way Robertshaw conducted herself during this fraud is astonishingly unethical. As our investigation progressed, we uncovered a level of deceit that is, frankly, shocking.”