Wednesday 3rd June, 2015

A trusted senior employee at a City insurance and risk management firm, has been jailed after colluding with a colleague in a false invoicing scame which funelled £700,000 from company accounts.

A City of London Police investigation uncovered how Ricky Merry, Head of Distributing Operations and his colleague Jason Senior, Head of Telecoms Operations, authorised 90 illegal payments to a recruitment company between 2009 and 2011.

Falsified company records noted the payments were for ‘systems maintenance work’ but no such services were ever delivered, with the stolen funds going to Merry and Senior.

The money was removed either through cash withdrawals or by transferring it into offshore accounts where it was used to fund Merry’s gambling habits and Senior’s extravagant lifestyle.

Both fraudsters were arrested in February 2011, and jailed earlier this year.

Merry and Senior were charged with, and pleaded guilty to, fraud by abuse of position and money laundering.

Merry was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, while Senior was handed a 24 month jail term suspended for two years, because he is the sole carer of his ill wife, and an order to undertake 240 hours unpaid work.

Detective Constable Lizzie Roberts, who led the investigation for the City of London Police, said: “Merry and Senior held positions of trust within the company, trust they chose to abuse as they set out to systematically steal from their employers.

“However complex a fraud, the police have the power and resources to investigate and ensure wrong-doing is punished, whoever you are and wherever you work.”