A married man scammed in an online honeytrap used his employer’s cash to spend tens of thousands’ of pounds on Amazon gift vouchers for his internet love-interest.
Alan Falkner, 54, stole £46,000 from engine manufacturer Lombardini between 2017 and 2020.
The lion’s share of the funds went on gift tokens for online retailer Amazon, which the married Banbury man passed on to a 'woman’ he had met online.
But that ‘woman’ was a fraudster into whose spider’s web Falkner had become trapped.
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Sentencing him at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday (March 22), Recorder John Hardy KC said: “You were the victim of a crime. You fell into the embrace of a scammer, as they are now known, who took you as a man of middle age, perhaps in the latter stages of middle age, at a point in time when during a man’s life he is vulnerable to aspirations which are beyond him.”
He added: “The aspirations can be summed up under the headline of ‘mid-life crisis’.
“As a result of being a victim of crime you yourself committed a crime and defrauded your employers of over £46,000.”
Earlier, the judge told Falkner: “This is a very sad case. Other than that which brings you before this court, you’ve led a decent, honest, respectable life, working hard, being a valued colleague, being a valued husband and a valued father.”
He suspended the two year prison sentence for two years, meaning that as long as Falkner remained out of trouble for the next 24 months he would not go inside.
Recorder Hardy said he felt able to suspend the jail term in part because of the steps he had taken to pay back the money ‘that you frittered away over a quite significantly long period of utter emotional madness’. So far, he had repaid around half the stolen funds, with almost £26,000 left to pay.
As part of the suspended sentence, Falkner was ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid work.
“I express the hope, Mr Falkner, that you will return to the bosom of your family and that this adventure into the world of the criminal justice system will be your very last experience of that system,” the judge said.
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Leanne Ballato, mitigating, told the judge that her client had had a ‘mid-life crisis’ at the time of the offending. He had got a tattoo but stopped short of acquiring a motorcycle, the court heard.
“He has never been in custody, so most certainly would not adapt well, like a lot of people,” she said.
Falkner, of Farm Way, Banbury, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court to fraud.
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