Detective guilty over trip paid with police credit card

Det Con Christopher Fernley, 42, used an American Express (AmEx) charge card issued by the Metropolitan Police to pay for two nights in the Yorkshire Dales while he and his wife attended a wedding party.

The jury took just two hours and 18 minutes to find Fernley guilty of all five counts of false accounting at Southwark Crown Court in London.

He was released on bail by Judge Stephen Robbins, and will return to be sentenced on February 25.

The judge asked for a pre-sentence report, and for a summary of other convictions in which police officers used AmEx cards to swindle cash.

Fernley, who dealt with extradition cases for the specialist crime directorate, charged £746.80 to the card for his countryside break. The AmEx account was intended for police expenses incurred in the course of duty.

During the trial John Traversi, prosecuting, said it must have been “abundantly clear” to the officer that they were personal expenses and not legitimate police expenses.

Mr Traversi told the court that records showed Fernley used the AmEx card to pay for two nights at the Devonshire Arms Country House Hotel in Yorkshire over the August bank holiday in 2006.

But he said records of Fernley’s hours showed he was on leave over the same period.

He told the court: “It must have been abundantly clear to Det Con Fernley, from the nature and amount of the expense, the occasion for which he incurred it, the presence of his wife, the character of the hotel, none of which can have slipped his mind, and from the information and documents that he had in his possession when he filled out the form on December 12, 2007, that this was not legitimate police expenditure but personal expenditure.

“The entry on the 288 (form) was therefore false and he knew it. He claimed it as a legitimate police expense in the hope that the real nature of the spend would not be uncovered.”

Richard Atchley, defending, said after the verdict that his client will be dismissed from the police through a “fast track” procedure.