Richard Shaw, 46 from Manchester, has been jailed for four years and eight months for defrauding almost £900,000 in Department for Work & Pension (DWP) benefits from vulnerable adults whose finances he was employed to protect.

Over a 8-year period between May 2015 and April 2023, Shaw, who had worked at Bolton Council in Lancashire since 2014, first as a finance officer in the client protection team, stole a total of £893,926 from the council by transferring the funds into his nine personal bank accounts.

As part of his role in the council’s financial protection team, initially as a finance officer and later as an appointee officer, Shaw managed the financial accounts. He was responsible for managing benefits and welfare payments for vulnerable benefit recipients who could not manage their own finances and had no one else to help them.