Manchester Crown Court (Crown Square) A JUDGE has accused a woman of forging a sick note after she failed to turn up for court for a second time. Liverpool woman Heather McCarthy, 33, was jailed for 12 weeks after she defrauded a lettings agency she worked for out of £4,800. But after getting out of prison she took a job at Bury-based recruitment agency Paragon Meed. In June 2018, she used the details of two former employees to divert funds into her own account, with an audit revealing there had been 20 transactions amounting to £7,700. In December last year, at Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court, Judge Peter Lawton, handed McCarthy, of Windermere Road, West Derby, an eight-month suspended prison sentence and 35 rehabilitation activity days.