AN Oldbury woman who fiddled £25,000 to try and save the nursery she ran has been warned by a judge she could be facing time behind bars.

Kaljit Randhawa, aged 33, who was the boss of The Little Genius Academy in West Bromwich made bogus claims for a number of children to get the money, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.

Nurseries that provided free service for hard-up families were given funding credits by the local authority but Randhawa boosted her income from Sandwell Council with the false claims.

Judge Barry Berlin told the mother of two it was serious offending and he warned her, " The likelihood is that there will be an immediate custodial sentence and you must prepare yourself for that."

Randhawa of Inkberrow Close denied 16 charges of fraud by false representation committed between January 2017 and December 2018.

But she was found guilty on 15 of the charges and cleared on the other offence by a jury after they retired to consider the evidence at the end of her trial.

The judge told her she will be sentenced at Warwick Crown Court on February 20 and he ordered her to surrender her passport and any other travel documents to ensure she does not leave the country.

The trial was told Randhawa took advantage of the Goverment's Early Years and Nursery Education Funding schemes which helped young children up to four years of age.

But some of the claims she made from the system were for children who had never attended the nursery while others had left and failed to return.

She was rumbled, said Simon Phillips, prosecuting, when former employees made complaints about the way the nursery was being run and an investigation was launched.