Online gambling fraudster gets two years in jail

A 27-year-old accounts manager at Cisco in the UK has been jailed for two years after pleading guilty to defrauding his clients out of a total of GBP 130,000 and using most of it to feed his online gambling habit.

Leigh Jones was earning anything between GBP 50,000 and GBP 100,000 a year in Northwich when he started swindling clients out of tens of thousands of pounds.

This week the Honourable Mr Justice Tim Holroyde, a visiting High Court Judge at the Chester Crown Court heard how, over a three-year period, Jones transferred the money out of the accounts of numerous customers into his own bank account and blew it online.

He was caught when another member of staff took over his accounts while he was on an expensive Caribbean cruise with his wife and young child in February this year.

Jones had only been working as an accounts manager for a month when he started to gamble online and began stealing money from the accounts.

Jones sold his GBP 27,000 Mercedes to repay some of the money, but it was soon discovered he had stolen money from more accounts, including GBP 84,000 in a single transaction.

“In his position he had access to customers’ money which he was able to divert to his personal account whenever he needed it,” said the prosecutor in the case. “If he had not gone on holiday it would not have come to light for some time if not at all.”

In mitigation, Jones’ attorney said that his client has repaid GBP 42,000 to Cisco; that his wife had left him; and that he was seeking help from Gambler’s Anonymous.

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