My greedy best friend stole £86,000 from my daughter’s charity

A woman whose best friend stole nearly £86,000 from a charity set up in memory of her daughter believes her crimes were fuelled by “greed, vanity and narcissism”.

Angela MacVicar was in court last week to watch Lindsay MacCallum plead guilty to two counts of fraud. MacCallum is now beginning a three-year jail term.

Over the course of 10 years, she defrauded cancer charity Rainbow Valley by forging the signatures of staff and rerouting cash. She also embezzled more than £9,000 from the Anthony Nolan Trust, a stem cell donation charity.

Angela told BBC Scotland News she feels “hurt and betrayed” and says it has “tarnished” her daughter Johanna’s legacy.

She believes “cold” MacCallum deliberately targeted her and their apparently close friendship was built with the sole intention to deceive.

“She liked really nice expensive clothes,” Angela, of Erskine, Renfrewshire, said of her former friend.

“She wanted to live a higher lifestyle than she had. The hurt and betrayal – that’s hard, even now.”

The former friends met when MacCallum was a fundraiser for the Anthony Nolan Trust.

Angela’s daughter Johanna had been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia, a type of cancer which affects the white blood cells and bone marrow, at just 16 years old.

She had a bone marrow transplant and subsequently got involved with the Trust.

By this time, Johanna had become a well-known campaigner. She wrote a newspaper column, featured in a documentary about her work and was meeting celebrities like Robbie Williams to raise awareness of leukaemia. Her mum was so proud that “Johanna did more in 27 years than most people do in 90”.

Angela said she and MacCallum quickly became close friends, phoning each other every morning at 06:00 and spoke three or four times a day, even while on holiday.

“Our friendship was intense,” said Angela. “We used to joke we had a brain between us”. She said she trusted her “implicitly”.

Such was their closeness that when Johanna died in May 2005, MacCallum, from Aberfoyle in Stirlingshire, asked to read the eulogy at her funeral.

Seven years later, when MacCallum was made redundant, the two women decided to set up the Rainbow Valley charity in Johanna’s memory.

MacCallum was in charge with Angela describing herself as a figurehead with nothing to do with the day-to-day running. Rainbow Valley offers counselling for cancer patients and the families of those impacted by cancer.

In 2022, MacCallum left Rainbow Valley and an account that only she and one other person had access to needed to be closed.

It was then that the monumental fraud was discovered.

It was Angela’s other daughter Kendall, who worked in the charity’s office, who noticed payments going out to MacCallum.

At first, Angela refused to believe it. She said: “It was complete disbelief, I was in denial. I was like, no, absolutely not a chance.”

She then phoned MacCallum. The denial, she said, was flat and absolute – but then, realising Angela had evidence in the form of bank statements, MacCallum admitted her guilt.

MacCallum said she did it for her daughter, who was in trouble and couldn’t pay her rent.

Angela said MacCallum initially apologised saying “I’ve let everybody down”.

But then she said MacCallum struck a different tone. “She told me, ‘Angela if you take this any further it will ruin me, and it will ruin you and it will ruin the charity,'” she said.

A total of £25,000 was paid back.

The next day, Angela went to the police.

A few months later MacCallum was arrested and the full extent of the theft and deceit began to unravel.

She had taken almost £86,000 from Rainbow Valley and another £9,000 from the Anthony Nolan Trust. It was spent on clothes and expensive gifts for herself and others.

Last week, Falkirk Sheriff Court heard MacCallum forged signatures of charity staff and rerouted cash from fundraising accounts for her own use between 2011 and 2021.

Angela said she has wondered what makes someone who is well-off and not in financial difficulty mastermind such an elaborate fraud against their closest friend.

She can come up with only one theory.

“Vanity and greed,” she said. “She liked really nice expensive clothes. She wanted to live a higher lifestyle than she had.”

Angela and Kendall have reflected on the brazen nature of the thefts. They both worked in the office, at times alongside MacCallum.

Sitting just a few feet away it appears MacCallum’s sometimes daily pilfering took place right in front of them.

Angela reflects: “Kendall said, mum when you look at the times she was taking money, she was sitting in the office transferring money while I was sitting across from her. Her conscience wasn’t pricked then’.”

MacCallum’s reputation is tarnished beyond repair – but not the charity itself. Angela says Rainbow Valley is flourishing.

Changes have been made and routine questioning of, even senior staff decisions, are encouraged.

Angela said: “Within the charity, I’ve put in place a ‘no-trust’ policy, which sounds awful – but you question, no matter how senior and you question it until you get the answer that you need to hear.

“When you work for a charity, it’s a privileged position to be in. The message should be sent out to the third sector that this is unacceptable.

“If she was just getting community service, it may be worth the risk. The message the sentence sent out is that this should not be tolerated. It brings me no joy to know she’s in jail but the message is out there that it won’t be tolerated.”

Angela thinks about how to sum MacCallum up. “She’s a narcissist. And she’s cold.”

Despite the decades-long friendship, Angela feels the whole relationship was fake and that she was deliberately targeted.

“I think she always set out with the intention to defraud,” Angela added.

Despite this, she insists: “I don’t hate her, I hate what she’s done.

“The reason I don’t hate her is because I don’t know her. I never did. Nobody ever knew her.

“She lied to everybody and herself. She’s tarnished Johanna’s legacy, and that hurts.”