Finance boss stole £115k from Shrewsbury firm
A bookkeeper who stole more than £115,000 from his former employer – three years after being convicted for fiddling another firm's books – has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.
Colin Biffen was taken on by a Shrewsbury-based company in December 2012 on an agency basis, Shrewsbury Crown Court heard.
The 54-year-old was taken on full-time in April 2013 as an accounts manager with a £21,000 annual salary.
Mr Nicholas Tatlow, prosecuting, said the following year he was promoted to accounts and operations manager and given a pay rise. But the court heard he had been fleecing the firm by making payments from a company bank account to his own.
Mr Tatlow said Biffen was draining the business bank account in multiple transactions, pretending the payments were going to a fictional utility company.
He said Biffen stole £115,066.59 in more than 100 transactions between March 2013 and February 2015.
In February last year, bosses got suspicious after a supplier complained about the non-payment of an invoice. Biffen was suspended and another accountant called in to go over the books.
Biffen was arrested and admitted making the transactions, saying he was in debt but he had intended to repay the money.
Biffen, of Columbine Way, Donnington, Telford, also admitted being in breach of a suspended prison sentence which he received for false accounting in 2012.
He was given a two-year and eight-month prison term for the theft and another 10-month jail term, running consecutively, for breaching his suspended sentence.
