Woman who stole £85k from former best friend's cancer charity ordered to repay cash

Lindsay MacCallum, who defrauded the cancer charity Rainbow Valley of £85,978 and embezzled £9,505 from the Anthony Nolan Trust, was jailed in October for three years for the crimes.

MacCallum, 61, has already repaid £25,000 to Rainbow Valley.

It had been feared however that if a criminal confiscation order was granted, the rest of money she was due to repay would have been diverted straight into Treasury funds.

At Falkirk Sheriff Court, fiscal Asif Rashid said it had been agreed with MacCallum’s lawyers that confiscation proceedings should be paused to give her until March to repay the remaining outstanding funds – £60,000 to Rainbow Valley and £9,505 to the Anthony Nolan Trust.

Advocate Sarah Loosemore said MacCallum, who was not present in court, had undertaken to do so, and simply required three months to liquidate the funds.

She said: “The best place for this money is for it to go back to the charities.”

Mr Rashid said that if the money was repaid by March 2025, the Crown undertook that court action under the Proceeds of Crime Act would be withdrawn.

MacCallum was ordered to be brought from prison for a final court hearing on March 5, 2025.

She pleaded guilty to stealing £85,000 from the Rainbow Valley cancer foundation, set up in memory of her best friend’s daughter, and also taking money from the Anthony Nolan Trust stem cell charity.

Mother-of-two MacCallum, of Aberfoyle, Perthshire, was told in October by her sentencing sheriff Maryam Labaki that she had “systematically and deliberately” perpetrated “calculating” frauds on the third sector organisations, and “betrayed” cancer victims.

The court heard that despite being in no financial difficulty, she forged signatures of Rainbow Valley staff and rerouted cash from fundraising accounts for her own use between 2011 and 2021.

She siphoned £50,000 into her own bank accounts, £5,045 into a joint account with her husband Fraser, and £1,670 into an account for grown-up children Craig and Eilidh.

She also spent £21,056 of charity money on a credit card and £4,210 on products from Next.

MacCallum worked as a fundraising manager for the Anthony Nolan Trust from 1995 to 2012 before she left to set up Rainbow Valley with best friend Angela MacVicar, 64.

In 2005, Angela, formerly of Lochgilphead, lost her daughter Johanna to leukaemia aged just 27 and the foundation was established in her honour.