Former Azzurri project manager who stole £1.3m ordered to pay back £146k

A former project manager at Azzurri Communications who stole £1.3m from the integrator has been ordered to pay back less than 10 per cent or spend more time in the slammer. Lee Stephen Young, 34, of Petronel Road, Aylesbury was found guilty of one count of theft from an employer at the town's Crown Court in March and sentenced …

[Anonymous Coward]

Crime doesn't pay...

Assuming he pays back the £134K of assets and takes the 4.5 year tariff, he'll probably serve half of that if he behaves himself.

Now I'm not saying prison time is easy, but if someone offered an average 34 year old £1.3million in exchange for losing their liberty for a couple of years I reckon quite a few of them would take it.

Put another way, £1.3million is 49 years of the average UK salary, before tax.

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: Crime doesn't pay...

Well, yes and no.

There is more to the prison sentence than just time off the streets - I doubt he'll get a significant job ever again, so that's 20-30 years of minimum wage rather than professional work once he gets out.

However, he's effectively just been offered the chance to earn himself £146k for two years of sitting in a cell, with no additional extra problems over and above the original sentence and criminal record. Which seems to me to be rather a lucrative offer, especially in light of the above-mentioned job prospects once he does get out.

GJC

[DaLo]

Re: Crime doesn't pay...

The extra 2 years is if he doesn't pay on time, he'll still have to pay the money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Crime doesn't pay...

@Geoff - never mind the £146K, I am wondering where the £1.3million went. It's kind of hard to spend that amount of money without acquiring some sort of material assets.

[xerocred]

where the money went

Some really expensive hookers?

[wikkity]

Re: where the money went

Or just sold off for next to nothing.

['s water music]

Re: Crime doesn't pay...

@Geoff - never mind the £146K, I am wondering where the £1.3million went. It's kind of hard to spend that amount of money without acquiring some sort of material assets.

I wonder if it was gross or net benefit. It seems likely that 1.3M is the retail (or invoiced) price of the kit stolen. That net you less even if you were ebay it all yourself. ~10% doesn't seem to be an unlikely haul from a high volume fence for (presumably) non-consumer kit.

OTOH the figure may simply be his net worth at the time of the order. Unless the funds exist, making an order for the whole sum seems little like the 1000 year sentences of our cousins across the ocean.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Crime doesn't pay...

"It's kind of hard to spend that amount of money without acquiring some sort of material assets."

Maybe he bought a really expensive rare stamp and then mailed it.

[Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face]

Re: Crime doesn't pay...

There's a big hayfield in Buxton, and at the north end of that hayfield there's a rock wall, right out of a Robert Frost poem. And somewhere along the base of that wall is a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield...

[BigFire]

Re: Crime doesn't pay...

£1.3million is the amount he stole in the form of excess order. He had to sell these items to unknown third party. I'd say he made less than 40% on that.

[Pen-y-gors]

Seems reasonable

but how come none of our incredibly talented investment bankers (you know, the ones who have to get obscene salaries and bonuses to make sure we get the best) have had THEIR assets confiscated?

Oh, I know, it must be because none of them have been charged with anything - even if their greed and incompetence managed to piss untold billions up the wall.

If you're going to fail, do it really big and no-one can touch you.

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: Seems reasonable

Yep it's the old adage....if you owe the bank a thousand you have a problem but if you owe them a million, THEY have a problem

[Hardcastle the ancient]

"or face 6 years' porridge"

Or? Or? Do criminals get to chose their punishment now?

[DaLo]

Re: "or face 6 years' porridge"

Criminals often get a choice - plea bargaining is common. Even choosing to admit guilt early can knock a large amount off a sentence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm....

An extra two years at taxpayers expense. According to Ken Clarke (Justice Secretary at the time) in 2010 it costs £38,000 a year so that's £76k that we the tax payer shell out and he still has to pay the £146k at the end of it. I think this is stupid, why not just seize his assets now as they already know what he is worth ?

[king of foo]

Re: Hmmm....

I can't understand how these crazy prison costs are calculated How can it cost more than the uk average salary to chuck someone in a cell and feed them for a year? They don't need a whole salaried prison guard per inmate. Surely the actual prison buildings are owned rather than rented and most will have been built decades ago. The government doesn't need to charge prisons tax. I don't get it. And then consider you have a free source of manual labour that could be leveraged to offset some of the costs, perhaps even turning a profit.

I think the prison boards need to visit some 3rd world sweatshops and take notes.

[xerocred]

Re: Hmmm....

Xbox games dvds, tv licences, sky subscriptions, personal masseures, it all adds up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Steal money, keep 90% of it.

You can sort of see what's wrong with modern justice.

[c:\boot.ini]

In France

Here, they confiscate belongings of anybody, even foreign nationals, if they think they were related to crime.

The Equatorial Guinea culture minister earned a smashing 5k or such a month and had big houses/flats across France, also in Paris, and Ferraris, Bentleys, you name it galore. He happens to be the son of the Guinean president. Well, French authorities thought that his wealth was not "honestly earned" and confiscated the lot ... all of his belongings in France.

They sold the wundercars as they lose too much value too quickly, pending investigation.

In French, but the sound of an engine is the same in France ... ;-)

http://www.slateafrique.com/47493/guinee-equatoriale-biens-mal-acquis-obiang-fils-paris-saisie-voitures

[Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face]

Re: In France

"Proceeds of crime act" - in the UK too.

[joewilliamsebs]

Something not right here...

Reported to the police in October and sentenced in March?

We had an accountant siphoning off funds. Whilst the police were awesome (we had a phone call one day soon after presenting them with the evidence to tell us that they'd raided his house at 5.30 that morning), the CPS and associated departments were useless. It took the better part of six months just to get the case moved from the Magistrates to the Crown court (as the mags had insufficient sentencing powers).

All in all, it took over two years to actually reach sentencing, and thanks to a procedural cock-up by the CPS he nearly got to keep all the money. We finally got a payout, of around 13% of the loss, last year - SEVEN YEARS after discovering it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't have happened at Netwise.

[NipseMuscle]

PC Porker

'Ang on a flippin' minit, willyer? We 'ave PC Porker of the ECU tellin' us the geezer 'arf-inched £1.3 millyon but 'e's bin told 'e 'as to pay back only £146 fousand quid of it. Wot 'appened to the rest of ver dosh? Vat's wot me wonts to know, me duz. PC Porks reckons, duz 'e, vat crime dun't pay. Ver bloke 'o diddit prolly fort to 'imself "vis time nex' year, o'll be a millyonair." Seems 'e's on is way to becoming wun. Good on 'im, Az fer the Plods at the ECU, dun't give up yer day jobs, you daft sodz.

[kmac499]

The George Best Pension Plan

I reckon he spent some of the money on wine, women (or possibly men; don't the chap personally.), the odd slow Nag and maybe an independent pharmaceutical supplier. The rest he just wasted...