Former debt collector jailed for theft
A former debt collector who stole from a major brewery to put cash away "for a rainy day" has been jailed for four-and-a-half years and ordered to pay back more than £1.6m.
Graham Sykes, 46, of Beacon Heights, Upholland, Lancashire, systematically stole from his former employer, Scottish & Newcastle. When police searched his then Huddersfield home they found more than £230,000 in cash, hidden in suitcases, drawers and even a black bin bag under the sink.
At Manchester Crown Square Crown Court Sykes was sentenced to four-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to two counts of theft totalling £630,000. A guilty plea to false accounting totalling a further £1.2m was taken into consideration.
The court found he had benefited from his crime to the tune of £1,981,634. He was ordered to pay his former employer £1,664,367 within 12 months or face a further seven-year consecutive prison sentence in default.
He had been arrested as part of a financial investigation by the money laundering investigation team of the National Crime Squad's Calder branch.
The court heard that Sykes had been employed as a debt recovery manager with Scottish & Newcastle from 1996 until 2002, when he was dismissed for gross misconduct.
His job had involved reducing debts owed to the company by licensees for loans and the supply of beverages, and his area of responsibility had been the north of England.
However, money Sykes had received from debtors was not always paid back to the brewery.
Funds paid in with respect to a specific debt and inten-ded exclusively by the payee for that purpose, were often applied to other completely separate debt accounts or were not paid in at all.
