A thieving father helped himself to almost £240,000 to pay off his debts, leaving the small company for which he worked on the brink of collapse.
David Parker's brazen fraud left colleagues at the financial advisor firm facing the threat of redundancy.
The 37-year-old man, who was a pension fund administrator, secretly made 53 transactions over four years, , moving cash into bank accounts he controlled.
Parker betrayed the the trust placed in him by Multiplex Pension Trustees Ltd, a court heard.
But he was jailed for two years and four months yesterday, Manchester Evening News reports.
The guilt-ridden dad told police about his crimes but cops did "nothing" until an independent financial advisor spotted "discrepancies" and his crimes began to unravel, Manchester Crown Court was told.
Sentencing the defendant, Judge Timothy Smith noted it was "regrettable" police took no action when Parker's solicitors told them about his crimes.
The judge added: "You have by the offending to which you have pleaded guilty held your hands up and showed yourself to be somebody not to be trusted who was in fact dishonest and who was dishonest for a significant period of time."
The court heard the defendant, who was earning £37,000 a year at Multiplex Pension Trustees Ltd, managed funds for various clients. One of these included Miss Mary of Sweden, a clothing company based in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, which employs 50 people.
Juliet Berry, prosecuting, said when a decision was made to "wind up" the relatively modest fund dating back to the 1990s, it was agreed Parker would write to the members of the scheme.
But unbeknown to his colleagues or members of the scheme he had been regularly stealing from the fund between 2016 and 2020.
In March 2020, Parker went on sick leave at a time when most of his colleagues at Multiplex were working from home due to the Covid pandemic restrictions and he had "little interaction" with other members of staff, the court heard.
When restrictions eased, he came into the firm's offices in central Manchester "from time to time" but he again went off work on sick leave during July and August of 2020, according to Ms Berry.
Colleagues believed his continued absence was "very much out of character", the court was told. He resigned from the company in a text he sent on August 5, 2020.
But his crimes began to unravel when an independent financial advisor acting for one of the members of the Miss Mary of Sweden fund, which has now been wound up, contacted Multiplex about "discrepancies" in the accounts.
An investigation established Parker was behind 53 transactions which transferred cash into three accounts he controlled, one of them his, another in the name of his partner and a third in the name of his step-daughter, totalling £238,128.55.
In a victim personal statement read out in court, Joanne Hever, of Multiplex, said the idea that fraud was a victimless crime was "far from the truth". The amount of money Parker had taken was "quantifiable" but the impact of his crime "has cost the business in other ways".
Ms Hever said "many many hours have been taken up unravelling the fraud" as "David went to considerable lengths to destroy records". It was a "significant drain" on the business, which she said has a turnover of £700,000 per year.
Parker was employed "in a position of trust' at the family owned business and his crimes had left colleagues in "shock, disbelief and anger", said Ms Hever.
A small team of seven who work at Multiplex were "devastated" and the firm's future was "very much uncertain", she said, adding some members of staff would be made redundant.
Ms Hever said she personally felt a "huge sense of shock and upset" and also "feelings of guilt and self-blame", going on that she suffered anxiety and depression.
She said she now questioned her judgment of character and her "ability to do my job", saying she constantly checked and double-checked her work.
When Parker was arrested and interviewed on December 31, 2021, he admitted he had stolen money from his employers.
Richard Simons, defending, referred the judge to a letter the defendant had written to him and also a number of character testimonials, although these were not read out in court.
The references spoke of his client's "many positive attributes" but also expressed "shock" that he could commit such crimes, said Mr Simons, who urged the judge to suspend any prison sentence 'in all the circumstances'.
Parker, he said, at first made "modest withdrawals" and had "fully intended" to pay them back but then made further withdrawals when he realised they had gone undetected.
Mr Simons said the money had not gone to "fund an extravagant lifestyle or purchase luxury items" but had been used to pay back a number of pay-day loans.
Parker had felt such shame as his personal life "deteriorated" he went to solicitors and instructed them to tell police he had been "helping himself" to pension fund money, the court heard.
Asked what police did when offered this information by the solicitors, Mr Simons said "nothing" and he added police officers suggested that the matter was taken up by the pension fund administrator.
Parker, of Wythenshawe, Manchester, admitted one charged of fraud and another of acquiring criminal property between August 2016 and July 2020.
