A jailed accountant serving a three-year prison term for stealing over £700,000 from his former employers has been ordered to pay back £340,000 in compensation - or face another 18-months inside.

Andrew Richards was sentenced in April this year for his seven year role in manipulating the bookkeeping figures at two different companies where he worked using the money to buy jewellery, cars, holidays and pay off his mortgage.

Richards, of Kilkenny Road, Guisborough, will now have to sell a house in Whitby, used by his former partner, to pay back his victims under the Proceeds of Crime Act, Cleveland Police have confirmed.

His assets included a £30,000 Range Rover, a £4,500 diamond set stone, a £13,000 Nissan Pathfinder, a £8,500 caravan and a £1,000 personalised registration plate - all of which have now been sold to satisfy the confiscation order.

Lawyers involved in the case agreed Richards made a total of £742,982.66 from crime. He has now been ordered to pay a sum he had available - £322,351.38 - to the state.

This money will go to compensate the defrauded companies where he worked.

Richards must now pay £244,664 to ThyssenKrupp Encasa Ltd, the parent company of a Thornaby-based business for which Richards was employed as an accountant.

He also stole from Lift Able UK and Disabled Lift Services, hiding his fraudulent activity by falsifying bogus record entries.

ThyssenKrupp lost over £530,000.

Richards has also been ordered to pay £77,686 to Middlesbrough developer Python Properties, where he worked as consultant director of finance.

The company lost £179,698, between 2010 and 2012, a period where it was forced to cut staff hours and wages due to tough trading conditions.

At the original hearing, Teesside Crown Court heard that between 2005 and 2008, the divorced father who suffered from clinical depression, diverted more than £530,000 from Lift Able UK into his personal account, before leaving his senior management accountant role and moving to Python Properties as consultant director of finance.

Richards, was also banned from being a director for 10 years.

Most of Richards' 'realisable assets' are in the £239,360 equity held in a home in Whitby, occupied by his former partner.

Additional funds will be realised from a £25,000 investment plan, two computers, a watch and cash.

The outstanding £420,631 from Richards' criminal 'benefit' can still be recovered if the authorities discover he has gained money or assets.