Barely Noticed Banks Crimes

It never ceases to amaze me, how lightly fraud and embezzlement are often treated by the courts in the UK. People will steal thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds from businesses or people.

White Collar Robbing Of Banks Is More Profitable

This crime often puts the businesses at risk of collapse, and sometimes leaves other employees at risk of unemployment, or leaves people in poverty. Yet the sentences remain comparatively light (usually less than five years, with only half of the time in prison), and recovery or compensation not usually possible.

Even when the fraud is committed against their own family, it often results in a permanent financial loss to the victims. Peter Simmons posed as a banker/financial advisor named Paul Newman and stole £450,000 from his fathers family business between 2015 and 2018. He was jailed for three and a half years, but is unable to make any restitution other than a nominal £1. A judge found that he had no assets that could be recovered ... but Simmons did say that he was sorry, and hoped that his dad could forgive him.

As I have said, when embezzlers take money from their employers, its often portrayed in the media as being almost victimless, but it really isn't. So for example, when Emma Rhodes a 38 year old employee of Norco GRP (which makes plastic components for boats) stole £437,000 from them over two years, it had dramatic impacts on the company. They had to cancel the staff bonus scheme and make cuts to try and recover. Ms Rhodes on the other hand had used the money to buy a house, go on expensive holidays, purchase a £80k car, and buy jewellery. 

She was sentenced to five years for fraud in 2020 and in 2021 it was decided that she only had to repay £120k of the money from her assets (so the company she stole from takes a £307,000 hit). This hardly seem fair or equitable, as the car and the house and the jewellery must surely be worth more than that amount. Surely also her other assets should also be available for sale to make good her theft? .... it just seems to be another criminals charter to me.

While we are on the subject of fraud ... how safe is your money? Its in a bank right? Well in terms of fraud that's actually one of the least safe places you can keep it ... or so it seems. So you think the biggest risk would be armed bank robbers, and even then its just one branch that is insured.

In the UK alone, the number of bank employees who commit fraud and steal from the bank or customers accounts is actually quite shocking. In October 2010 police arrested Lorna Keary and she was eventually jailed for three years after being found guilty of siphoning off tens of thousands of pounds (approx £126,950, only £50,000 of which was in her personal account when she was caught), from customers accounts at the Tunbridge Wells branch of HSBC to fund her lifestyle.

Glenn Mason, a NatWest bank manager at the branch in Biggin Hill, Kent, was arrested in July 2012 and convicted and jailed for 15 months in November 2014, for stealing £185,000 from nine pensioner customers, in order to fund his internet gambling addiction. He even framed two colleagues by transferring money using the identity of two of his colleagues, leading to them both being sacked and falsely charged with fraud. He said he will pay back the whole £185,000 out of his Royal Bank of Scotland (the NatWest bank owner) pension pot as compensation (the bank had refunded the stolen amounts).

Taminder Virdi and Abubakar Salim both worked at the same Trustees Saving Bank branch in Stoke Newington in 2014, where they transferred funds out of customer accounts into 65 fraudulent beneficiary accounts that they had opened. These beneficiary accounts were managed by Babar Hussain, an accountant accomplice. All three were arrested in 2016 or 2017, as the evidence of their guilt was uncovered. Virdi had earlier resigned following an internal fraud investigation, but had somehow got a position at the Santander bank ... where it was found that he had continued the same offending at bank Santander. In 2019 Hussain got a prison sentence of five years and four months. Virdi got a prison sentence of three years and six months. Salim got a prison sentence of four years.

Natasha Bassi, a Santander personal banker in Southampton, defrauded customers by taking money from their accounts – totalling £53,219 over a six month period. She made 17 unauthorised transactions between May 6 and December 16, 2014, on the accounts of 14 elderly customers. In November 2016 she was jailed for two years.

Samantha Such, stole £19,000 from the accounts of elderly customers to fund her boyfriend's gambling habit. She raided accounts via fraudulent bank transactions, She was employed as a personal banker at Bristol's Co-op bank in the city's Colmore Row, and was jailed for nine months in 2015.

They don't even have to be sophisticated frauds .... some just take cash from the safe so to speak. Benjamin Thornton was jailed in July 2019 for 40 months, after stealing £190,000 from the Bristol branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland where he was manager, over a three-year period between 2012 and 2015. He was jailed for three years and four months.

Gordon Irvine swindled almost £90,000 from his Dundee Santander bank branch to fund a lifestyle of foreign holidays luxury goods was jailed. He even used a compensation payment of £250 (instead of the usual £50) to a female customer, to end up sleeping with her. He simply lifted in cash from the back of his branches ATM. He was jailed in 2015 for for 22 months.

In May 2020 Victoria Withers, the customer services manager of the Stroud branch of NatWest bank was convicted of stealing £135,000 from her branch over a five year period between 2012 and 2017. She simply took £500 pw of surplus cash, as she moved it from the branch to a storage unit. She was jailed for a total of 22 months, as she had no assets to be confiscated. The judge made a nominal £1 confiscation order.

These are just a few of the large number of crooked bank worker crimes, that simple searches on the lines of 'banker stole from accounts, etc' uncovered .... makes you wonder doesn't it. But what's even odder is that the sentences for robbing a bank from the outside rather than the inside jobs, are a lot harsher then the white collar version, despite the white collar version usually getting away with more money.