Insurance chief in £1m fraud jailed for six years

Terry Thackrah, 58, fiddled the money over six years and was still receiving defrauded cash after he retired to a luxury four-bed villa in Northern Cyprus, where he set up home with Thai wife Jarawadee Thackrah and her son.

He drove a 50,000 Range Rover Sport with the personal registration TJT, lavished gifts on his daughter – who knew nothing of his crimes – and spent thousands of pounds on flights to Cyprus, Lanzarote and Dubai.

Leeds Crown Court was told yesterday that Thackrah earned 37,000 a year as a client relationship manager for Royal Bank of Scotland Insurance, which paid commission to companies including Swinton and others.

In a scam described as "unsophisticated", he used his knowledge of the accounting system to divert commission due to client firms into two bank accounts he had set up himself under bogus companies, Motoring Gold and Lawn Tennis Squash Badminton Indoor Bowls.

Barrister Elyas Patel, prosecuting, said the total sum defrauded over six years amounted to just over 1,110,000.

Thackrah, formerly of Wakefield, admitted two money laundering charges relating to a period from February 2003 to when he was arrested in November 2009.

He was detained at Stansted Airport in Essex as he tried to flee to Northern Cyprus with his wife after he realised the police were onto him because one of his bank accounts had been frozen. His wife boarded a flight before detectives could speak to her.

Mr Patel said the money had been spent on an extravagant lifestyle over several years.

The father-of-one and his wife of 14 years, Gillian, split in 2006, and he married Jarawadee in 2007.

Mr Patel said Thackrah had lavished gifts on his daughter Laura, paying for her flights to Cyprus and flying himself to the UK to escort her on her trips to Cyprus.

Laura told investigators that in October last year she made a trip to London with her father, during which she had attended football games on a Wednesday and Saturday, went to a show and ate meals every evening at "posh restaurants".

It is believed Thackrah's scam was uncovered when police were tipped off about his lavish lifestyle and Mr Patel said the fraud was finally uncovered two-and-a-half years after he had retired on two pensions.

Sanderson Munroe, mitigating for Thackrah, said his client had suffered a drink problem but began taking money because "he could not believe it was so easy".

"He told me he was relieved to have been caught and feels free from the lies he has been carrying round. He did not know how to stop what he had started."

Sentencing him to six years in prison, Judge Peter Hunt said that the fraud, although not particularly sophisticated, did represent a gross breach of trust.

He added: "In my judgment this was dishonestly on a very serious scale, indeed the breach of trust was gross and inflated your income by an enormous amount."