A woman has been sentenced to three years in prison for stealing nearly £86,000 from a cancer charity established in memory of her best friend’s daughter. Lindsay MacCallum, 61, defrauded the charity Rainbow Valley over a decade after co-founding it with Angela MacVicar.
MacCallum also embezzled £9,505 from the Anthony Nolan Trust, a charity focused on stem cell donations. The court revealed that she forged signatures of charity staff and redirected funds from fundraising accounts for her personal use between 2011 and 2021.
Mrs. MacVicar expressed her devastation outside the court, stating that MacCallum had “fooled everybody” and betrayed the trust placed in her. The sheriff described MacCallum’s actions as “systematically and deliberately” perpetrated fraud against the organizations, emphasizing the impact on cancer victims.
MacCallum previously served as a fundraising manager for the Anthony Nolan Trust before helping to establish Rainbow Valley in honor of Mrs. MacVicar’s late daughter, Johanna, who died of leukaemia in 2005. The two worked together for ten years until a fallout in 2022, during which discrepancies in a fundraising account were discovered.