MARGARET Lesley Cross admitted stealing £164,000 from Swindon businessman John Keeping while his wife was dying of cancer.

Cross, 62, formerly of Queensfield, Swindon, but now living in Scunthorpe, netted the cash from Keeping Transport by falsifying invoices, as well as £115,595 from Abbey National, Alliance and Leicester and Nat West banks by applying for a false mortgage and loans, Swindon Crown Court heard.

Mr Keeping, 59, of Swindon Road, Stratton, employed Mrs Cross as an administrative assistant in 1995, but as his wife Sally became ill due to cancer Cross was given more and more responsibility.

She started stealing two months before Mrs Keeping's death in June 1997, and carried on until she was arrested in May 2001.

Mr Keeping said: "That woman has destroyed my life. My business has gone bust because of what she stole from me, and my house is re-mortgaged against the business so I will lose that as well, on top of losing my wife."

John Keeping set up Keeping Transport haulage firm 30 years ago with Sally.

After an initial struggle the business soon began to flourish, and John's son Ivan followed him into the business and worked as a lorry driver.

John and Sally Keeping had been married for more than 30 years when she first developed breast cancer in 1993.

For the last few months of her life, Mrs Keeping was nursed at the Prospect Hospice, for which John and some business acquaintances raised £1,000 in gratitude for the care she received there.

It was as Mrs Keeping lay close to death in the hospice that Cross first started stealing from the firm, in April 1997.

Detective Constable Marie Aveyard, of Wiltshire Fraud Squad, said: "Margaret Lesley Cross created a system of false invoices, where she billed companies for work that was not done or she billed completely fictitious companies."

Recently Mr Keeping's firm has hit problems, after setting up its operation on the former Bamptons site in Stratton Road last November, with residents contesting the planning permission.

Residents have been campaigning against the lorries using Stratton Road as they say this makes it impossible for people to sleep or use their gardens.

The case was taken to a public inquiry where Philip Brown, Traffic Commissioner for the Western area considered all the facts and Mr Keeping will hear the decision in a week's time.

In December 2000 Mr Keeping's lover Jeanette Palmer, then 48, escaped jail after dousing his home with petrol and setting it alight.

Though they vowed to stay together after she was spared a prison sentence at Bristol Crown Court, in favour of two years' probation they are no longer a couple.