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Fraud admitted

From the archive, first published Friday 1st Jul 2005.

A Cradley Heath fraudster who took part in a plot to rip off the company he worked for to the tune of £19,000 narrowly escaped jail.

"You have escaped going to prison by a whisker" Recorder Patrick Thomas QC told Jefferson Colton and his partner-in-crime Ian Lea.

Colton, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told, drew a number of false orders on a firm which distributed engineering components.

These were sent to Lea, at the Telford firm where he was a director, and he raised false invoices with the two men sharing the £19,435 they fiddled.

But the crooked plot drew a number of false orders was discovered by auditors at the Telford company and the two men were rumbled, said Mr Neil Chawla prosecuting.

Colton, aged 35, of Manson Drive, and 38-year-old Lea, of Hednesford, near Cannock, admitted four charges of obtaining property by deception. They each asked the court to take into consideration nine other similar offences and were both ordered to do 200 hours Community Punishment.

Colton was ordered to pay compensation totalling £4,580, with Lee told to pay £4,828. The court heard the two men, who were also ordered to pay £184 costs, had already started repaying the money they had fiddled.

Mr Walter Bealby defending Colton said the chance to make some money came up and he succumbed to temptation. He said Colton was going through a messy divorce at the time and owed £6,000. He said: "He is awash with remorse for what he did."

The Recorder told the two men it was a "substantial breach of trust."

He said: "People who steal from their employers or assist others in doing normally go to prison. But I feel that the chances of you reoffending are extremely low."

He said the men had stopped the crooked racket before they were caught.

He said: "If you had carried on it is difficult to see how mercy could have been extended."

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