Criminology student helped defraud professor

A criminology student whose bank account was used to defraud an Oxford University professor escaped a jail sentence today.

Natalie Persue, 21, accepted a transfer of nearly £18,000 stolen from scientist Sir Peter Hirsch. It was part of a larger £800,000 fraud on 50 account holders. She at first denied knowledge but later admitted making withdrawals on behalf of the fraudster, saying he had been a childhood friend who claimed the cash came from his father in Nigeria and was for his studies.

At the Old Bailey, Persue, a third-year BA student at Greenwich University, admitted money laundering. Today she was given 120 hours' community service and told to pay £100 costs. Mr Justice Saunders said: "You are intelligent, which means this offending is rather alarming. You are not going to prison because of your plea and also I am satisfied to an extent you have been used. You've been extraordinarily foolish."

Sir Peter Hirsch is Emeritus Professor at Oxford's department of materials. An expert in electron microscopy, he is a Royal Society member.

Persue, who has an 18-month-old daughter and works as a matchday barmaid at West Ham, had no previous convictions. Her lawyer Graeme Irvine told the court: "She was a vulnerable woman of 19 and two months pregnant. She had been left by her partner and was living in a hostel in Stratford.

"A friend... suggested he had problems with tuition fees which would be paid from his father's Nigerian account. She didn't realise there was anything untoward." She made eight withdrawals from Barclays in December 2008 and was arrested in March last year.