High-flying lawyer who conned £6m from bank jailed

Kate Johns, 39, deputy head of Tokyo Mitsubishi’s legal department, repeatedly cajoled colleagues into ignoring procedure and approving letters of credit totalling more than 6m.

Sentencing her at London’s Southwark Crown Court, Judge John Price said: “The essence of the fraud was that you used your position to persuade, cajole and, I’m afraid, bully those lower down the chain of command to authorise the loan.”

The massive transfers ended up in the coffers of struggling Indonesian carrier Air Efata, which boasted just three planes.

In return, the 150,000-a-year lawyer received pay-offs totalling 1.95m, more than 1.1m of which was used to clear the mortgage on her luxury townhouse.

She also splashed out 40,000 on a pair of earrings to go with the 35,000 ring grateful airline chief Frank Taira-Supit had bought her.

Investigators also found she had received another 1.05m from him before the scam. She claimed it was for legal advice, but it helped fund her shopping trips, personal grooming and breast surgery.

But her betrayal of trust failed to rescue the Harvard law graduate’s airline and it was grounded. The devastated 58-year-old former lawyer later hanged himself.

Married Johns, of Gloucester Avenue, Camden Town, north London, claimed she had simply been doing the bidding of one of her bosses to protect the bank’s interests. But the jury took less than three hours to convict her of 12 offences.

Five concerned using letters of credit to obtain money transfers by deception totalling $10.9m (6.67m) by deception, while the remainder involved the acquisition of 588,373 criminal property.

Johns collapsed in the dock as she was led from the court. The judge told the court a “brilliant young woman” had “seen her career destroyed”.