Wounded recruit in £45k fraud is jailed
A Territorial Army recruit who suffered shrapnel wounds while in Afghanistan was today beginning a 20-month prison sentence for a £45,000 fraud at the West Midland bank where he worked.
Ricky Bates took the cash from Birmingham Midshires while working there as a customer services agent. He used some of it to buy a Mini Cooper convertible and buy shares in Lloyds TSB. But the 24-year-old was rumbled after bank bosses spotted financial irregularities.
Bates' job at the bank in Pendeford, Wolverhampton, involved him dealing with mortgage customers who had fallen into arrears, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
The work allowed him to legitimately refer customer cases to a national debt management company.
But during 2009, Bates, of Marnel Drive, Merry Hill, authorised a series of bank drafts to a fake company which he had set up, said prosecutor Miss Rhiannon Jones.
He then transferred a series of payments into his own bank account for £20,212, £15,700, £9,032 and £874.
The court heard the fraud took place over a two-week period in September 2009. Bates, who had joined the Territorial Army soon after starting work at the bank in 2007, was deployed to Afghanistan in January last year for a six-month tour.
But he returned to the UK after suffering shrapnel wounds to the chest, said defence barrister Mr Mark Cotter. He was arrested in October last year.
Judge Amjad Nawaz jailed Bates, who had earlier pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud, for 20 months.
