A former Chantrey Vellacott accountant has been jailed for three years after he admitted stealing £235,000 from small businesses.
Yet Garry Hacker, an insolvency practitioner at Chantrey Vellacott, based at the Top 25 firm's Hove office, escaped having to pay back hundreds of thousands of pounds after declaring himself bankrupt. Instead, the 50-year-old father-of-four, was ordered to pay back just £1.
Lewes Crown Court heard how Hacker, a former ICAEW member struck off in 2011 after a disciplinary tribunal hearing, had spent the illicit gains on his four children by three different mothers.Nicholas Hamblin, prosecuting, said Hacker of Lenham Avenue, Saltdean, found rent prices where he lived very high.
He said he joined Chantrey Vellacott as an office manager in 2000 and worked his way up to partner in 2010 on a £70,000 a year salary and sometimes took home expenses of £1,500-a-month.But from 2001 he had been penning himself personal cheques destined to have been used to pay creditors of companies that had gone into administration, The Argus reports.
Hacker's eight-and-half year trail of dishonesty only ended when an eagle-eyed cashier became suspicious of a rogue transaction and the full scale of his fraudulent spree was unearthed.Police were alerted and Hacker duly confessed to everything.He pleaded guilty to one count of fraud by breach of trust and one of obtaining funds by deception.In defence, Kevin Light, said there was 'no mitigation, no excuse' and that his client 'was dreadfully sorry and very remorseful'.
Judge Scott-Gall said: 'You had a handsome salary. The real losers in this case are the unfortunate clients of Chantrey Vellacott who had to repay their creditors the real victims of this are the little people.'The company was rowing one way and you were rowing the other way. You were siphoning off increasingly large amounts of money and the company was haemorrhaging money. You have looked in the mirror and know precisely what you have done.'
A Chantrey Vellacott DFK spokesman said: 'We are grateful that this regrettable matter has now been concluded with the sentencing of the individual concerned. His actions were detected by staff and we thank everyone involved in bringing this to light and the individual to justice.
'We, of course, reviewed our internal processes when this was detected three years ago, and further checks have been introduced subsequently. Creditors have been recompensed for any losses that they might have suffered as a result of his actions.'