This is the 'pathologically dishonest' woman who swindled £700,000 from Brierley Town Council - leaving it with massive debts and condemning thousands of householders to pick up the bill for years to come.
Jan Cooper 52, forged loan applications in the council's name and squandered the cash on Mediterranean cruises, lavishing gifts on friends and other outlandish gestures to make herself popular.
She had a history of false accounting and theft from employers and in 2003 was jailed for three years for helping herself to £800,000.
Her crimes were featured in a Channel 4 documentary in 2004 - but her notoriety didn't stop her landing a job as the clerk to Brierley Town Council just two years later where she earned up to £26,000-a-year.
And within weeks of starting, she was up to her old tricks again - inventing invoices, faking loan applications, forging councillors' signatures and altering the minutes of meetings so she could syphon off cash and cover her tracks.
But people living in the area served by Brierley Town Council could end up paying the price for her dishonesty for the next 30 years as it has been left in 'a desperate financial position'.
It has had to take out a loan of £480,000 from Barnsley Council to help settle some of the debts; services it provides have had to be cut and some 5,000 households have seen their council tax bills soar.
The cost of prosecuting her had also reached six figures.
Brierley Mayor, Coun Pat Doyle said a public meeting would now be held to explain what had happened - and how Cooper managed to get away with it for so long.
