A pregnant bookkeeper is facing a possible jail term for a £30,000 fraud – just a month before she is due to give birth.

Katie Stevens, 32, is expecting her child on September 26 – but a judge has ruled she is to be sentenced later this month.

Stevens, of Bond Road, Gillingham, has admitted two charges of fraud – one on a Tenterden children's nursery school where she was working.

And Judge Michael O’Sullivan has told her that her crimes had "passed the custody threshold".

Canterbury Crown Court heard how she transferred money from Home Farm Children’s Nursery into her own bank account.

She would later claim she viewed the money as "an interest free loan" for her business which she "had always intended to repay".

Robert Dowling, prosecuting, told how Stevens, who ran her own company, KMS Accountancy Services, was the bookkeeper for Home Farm and a Kent company, Master Hydraulics Ltd at the same time.

He said Stevens had "disguised" payments made from Home Farm’s accounts which should have gone to the Revenue and Customs – but paid them to herself.

"Although she is only charged with £31,410, in fact the evidence discloses diverted payments of just over £45,000.

"These largely were payments which should have been paid to HMRC on behalf of the school in respect of PAYE and National Insurance payments.

“But from July to November 2010 she diverted these payments away from HMRC. A total of £20,372 was transferred online into her bank account.

"All of those payments were disguised by Stevens, so that they appeared on bank statements of Home Farm to be going to HMRC. In fact she had entered her own bank details instead," he said.

The court heard she also used the accounts of Master Hydraulics to transfer £25,000 of Home Farm funds, unknown to its bosses.

In November 2010, Revenue staff contacted the school to ask where its money was – and Stevens lied to nursery staff that "everything was in order".

Mr Downling added: "She then paid the school £6,434, saying there had been an error in respect of the payment. Rather than admitting what she had done was trying to make the whole thing look like a mistake by paying back some of the money."

In the following January she wrote to the school saying that money had “inadvertently” been paid into the wrong account.

"She tried to reassure the school that everything was in order. That was a lie," he added.

He said she repeated her devious behaviour at Master Hydraulics – diverting £41,000 into her own account.

"It is right to say that she also used her own account to pay some of the company’s debts – which resulted in the company not actually suffering any financial loss," he added.

Judge Michael O’Sullivan ordered a new probation report before sentencing, telling her that the offences could attract a jail sentence.