Everyone’s made that classic mistake of posting something on Facebook that comes back to haunt you. You know, checking into a club when you've told your boyfriend you were having a night in to look after a heartbroken mate. Or posting a pic of yourself enjoying sunshine in the park when you're supposed to be off sick from work.
But, make yourself feel better. At least your dumb Facebook move wasn't anyway near as much of a fail of that of 23-year-old Pascale Sherwin, who’s just landed herself 200 hours of unpaid community service after posting pictures of herself wearing clothes and jewellery she’d nicked from her employer on Facebook. Excellent. Good move, Pascale.
Becki and Bradley Cannings, who had employed professionally-trained nanny Pascale to look after their two-year-old, Olivia, were initially confused when they discovered that loads of designer clothes and jewellery had gone missing from their family home in Exeter, Devon. At no point did the couple suspect their nanny of stealing from them, until Becki’s (clearly tech-savvy) mum pointed out a picture of Pascale wearing some of the stolen clothes on Facebook. After a bit of investigating, it transpired that Pascale had even tagged Becki in a picture of her wearing some of the stolen clothes. Duh!
‘I feel stupid, but I never once considered it would be her. She had become part of the family,’ Becki explained. ‘Mum then looked on Sasha’s Facebook account and I felt physically sick. In her profile picture, she was wearing all of my clothes and was doing so in several others. I was even tagged in them. I don’t know if she was just stupid or rubbing my nose in it. I have never felt so violated.’
Becki took the Facebook photographs to the police, but was told there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute. So she and Bradley took things into their own hands – installing cameras all over their home and collecting three days of footage of Pascale roaming through Becki's wardrobes.
‘Viewing the footage was like sitting down to watch a horror movie. We thought we would be fast-forwarding a lot, but within five minutes we caught her stealing a cardigan and putting it in her bag,’ Becki said.
When police then searched Pascale's home in Exeter, they found the stolen gear and she was given 200 hours of unpaid community service after a court found her guilty of theft. Makes your Facebook faux pas look kind of tame now, doesn’t it?
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Picture: SWNS
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.