An NHS accountant who stole £45,500 from the health trust he worked for has been jailed for 20 months.
Durham Crown Court heard how payments for £32,500 and £13,000 were made by Durham and Darlington Primary Care Trust for services supplied by a company called Bariatrics UK, in August and December 2010.
But the company was fictitious and the account the money was paid into belonged to the trust's former senior management accountant, Victor Mukula.
The court was told Mukula had left the trust in 2011, having received a redundancy payout of £39,318 after just three years service.
Prosecutor Jane Mitford said that when two false payments were discovered, after examination of the trust's accounts by a fraud specialist, police visited Mukula at his home in January this year.
He immediately confessed, saying: 'Yes, I did it.'
Mukula, 43, said he created the invoices on his work computer and faxed them from a nearby room at the trust' to the main office to create the illusion they were genuine.
He then made copies of an authorised signatory on the invoice and used a real VAT number from a Body Shop receipt, before filing the false invoices with the trust's payment office.
When asked why he committed the fraud, Mukula said he had 'substantial debts', having racked up £30,000 in loans and on credit cards.
Mukula, 43, who was living in Newcastle at the time, but now of Hannan Road, in Liverpool, today (Friday, October, 26) admitted three charges of fraud.
Defence lawyer, Jonathan Cousins, said Mukula, of previous good character, had vowed to allow the trust to recover the money, plus the £7,500 cost of the probe, from his pension fund.
'He made admissions not just in interview at the police station, but at the point of arrest.
'He spent a considerable amount of time and hard work building his life.
'But this has devastated it, as he's lost his marriage, his job, his home and the majority of his pension.'
Jailing him for 20 months, Judge Christopher Prince said it was, 'well planned offending', made worse by the fact the money was stolen from the NHS.
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