Bank manager admits £60,000 fraud

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A former bank manager from Gloucestershire has been jailed for two years after admitting defrauding his branch of nearly £60,000.

Gary Ellis, 37, of Abbeymead, Gloucester, opened bogus accounts in other customers' names while he was manager of Barclays bank in Stroud.

Gloucester Crown Court heard Ellis took the cash to fund his gambling habit.

Passing sentence judge David Lane said: "I can't imagine a more selfish or worthless use of funds."

You breached that trust in the most flagrant way Judge David Lane

The court was told Ellis, a married father of two, siphoned off £58,906 from the accounts over a seven-year period to pursue a gambling habit - at one stage spending £750 per day on his addiction.

He had previously pleaded guilty to 19 specimen charges ranging from obtaining property by deception to theft and forgery.

The jury heard Ellis had joined Barclays from school and that he had successfully risen up the ranks within the organisation.

In 2005 a compliance team had noticed irregularities in some of the accounts handled by Ellis. Following a bank investigation, he was fired and the police were called.

Officers discovered that Ellis had fraudulently opened business accounts in the name of three Barclays customers without their knowledge.

'Supreme trust'

He used these accounts to open overdraft facilities and loans and would then transfer funds into his own current account to feed his addiction to roulette and horseracing.

Ellis asked for a further 150 similar offences to be taken into consideration.

Sentencing Ellis judge Lane said: "You were a bank manager at your local branch.

"You knew better than anyone else that you occupied a position of supreme trust. You breached that trust in the most flagrant way," he said

His wife broke down in the public gallery as the prison sentence was handed down on Monday.