A Surbiton payroll supervisor who clocked up £1,300 of premium rate phone bills in four months wrongly paid himself more than £8,000 to cover his debts.
In April 2005 Justin Knight, of Ditton Road, while working at Kingston temping agency Kelly Services, made three payments totalling £8,862.72 to his bank account through fraudulent payments to two former employees and one current member of staff.
Kingston Crown Court heard on Friday how 34-year-old Knight was fired in July 2005 and it was then that his illegal activities were discovered.
advertisement
He had set up fraudulent one-off payments from the company to three existing or ex-employees in April 2005 but had sent them all to his bank account.
“I’m sure you understand that this is absolutely your last chance. If you commit any crime like this again you will be straight inside.”
Recorder M Stoole
Kelly Services new payroll manager's suspicions were aroused when he saw that Knight had not registered the address or National Insurance number of the three employees on the system and that all the payments were destined for the same account.
Prosecutor David Baird described the fraud as "unsophisticated" but said if Knight had not been fired he probably would not have been caught.
Kate Wilkinson, defending, said that in 2005 while depressed and suffering from alcohol-related problems, Knight had racked up large credit card debts. She said he still owed some £12,000 to credit card companies.
She said: "His depression was such that between January and April 2005 he had incurred more than £1,300 of debts just by calling premium rate phone lines."
Knight, who now works as a financial analyst for Cisco Systems, pleaded guilty to three counts of false accounting involving a breach of trust.
He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for each of the three counts, to run concurrently, and that was suspended for two years. He was ordered to do 120 hours' unpaid community work and pay a compensation order of £5,000.
Recorder M Stoole said: "I'm sure you understand that this is absolutely your last chance. If you commit any crime like this again you will be straight inside."
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
Print
Email this
Comment
