‘Trusted’ boss spent all the cash he stole from firm
FINANCIAL investigators have been unable to find any of the more than £200,000 a trusted manager stole from the family firm where he worked, a court has heard.
Philip Mileham abused his position in the company to order goods from their suppliers which he then sold on privately, using his knowledge of the firm’s systems and procedures to cover his tracks.
All the while he was boasting to his colleagues about the extravagant lifestyle he was leading – a lifestyle he was funding by stealing from their employers.
In July this year Mileham was sentenced to three years in prison at Swansea Crown Court for what a judge called a systematic, deliberate, and cynical fraud carried out against Westward Energy Services Ltd in Pontardawe, a family-run firm which provides heating services to domestic customers, local councils, and housing associations.
When the case came back to court for a proceeds of crime hearing the court was told the 43-year-old had benefited from his criminal conduct to the tune of £205,320 – but financial investigators could find no available assets held by the defendant. The court made a nominal £1 confiscation order.
Mileham worked as an installations manager at Westward Energy Services, and over the course of three years used his position to order more than 300 heating boilers from the company’s supplier which he sold privately, keeping the money for himself. The defendant used “a variety of means” to cover his tracks meaning the movement of the boilers was not spotted.
At his sentencing hearing in July, barrister Christopher Rees said the defendant’s father had worked for the firm before him, and it had to be accepted there was a “long-standing” relationship of trust. He said his client had got into financial difficulties following his divorce, and had begun drinking heavily – these things together, he said, had driven the offending.
The barrister said references handed to the court showed a very different side to the defendant’s personality, and he said Mileham, of Lime Tree Way, Newton, Porthcawl, was “burning with shame” at what he had done.
Sending him down, judge Paul Thomas QC said while the defendant’s divorce may have played a part in the offending, he suspected the greater part was played by greed.
The judge said the defendant was clearly a business-savvy man, and would have know his actions were putting the jobs of those he worked with at risk – even as he was boasting to those same people about his lifestyle.