Council thieves cost the taxpayer

Two former employees of Newark and Sherwood District Council who stole from Kelham Hall have been ordered to carry out community service.

Paul Chambers (44) and Paul Corcoran (39) second and third in command of the council’s information systems department, were sentenced to 200 hours and 250 hours of community service respectively, by Judge John Burgess at Nottingham Crown Court on Tuesday.

The men were told that a charge of conspiring to defraud the council will be withdrawn.

Corcoran, of Clipstone, previously admitted ten thefts of laptop computers and one of a computer hard drive.

Chambers, of Mansfield, admitted five thefts of laptops.

Judge Burgess told them: “Everyone in Newark is interested in this and rightly so because you were employed by the people of Newark.

“Every theft was effectively a theft from the ratepayer.”

The judge said the breach of trust was enormous and deplorable. He said it was right that both men lost their jobs.

The prosecutor, Mr Martin Hurst, said a council internal audit led to the police being called.

The court heard that Chambers was bankrupt, owing £37,000, and would not be able to repay the cash equivalent of the computers he stole. The judge ordered he pay a nominal sum of £1.

The court heard that the value of the computer equipment when new was a combined £17,000 but had largely depreciated in value.

In one instance a mix-up led to 30 laptops being delivered rather than the 15 ordered.

The head of information systems, Clifford Sanderson, ordered that the surplus be retained rather than sent back but not all were entered on to the council’s inventory, Mr Hurst said.

Corcoran, who has just set up his own business, must pay back within 28 days the £2,900 he made through selling the stolen computers on Ebay and, on two occasions, to a friend in the carpark at Kelham Hall.

The judge accepted that many of the computers taken by Corcoran had outlived the four-year cycle for such equipment at Kelham Hall.

The money Corcoran must pay, with an added £500 costs, falls under the Proceeds of Crime Act and goes into a central fund.

If the council wants the equivalent in compensation it must, agreed the judge, pursue the two through the civil courts.

Chambers, said his counsel, Mr Robin Brown, had not sought to sell his stolen items but passed them to his family and kept some in order to upgrade his own equipment.

Mr James Hodivala, for Corcoran, said he was a family man with two young children and was a carer for some family members. He had debts, aside from his mortgage, of £30,000.

After the case, the chief executive of the district council, Mr Andrew Muter, said the council had written to the Crown Prosecution Service to ask why a compensation order was not pursued.

He said seeking compensation through the civil courts would cost the council money, whereas there would have been no further cost if it had been pursued through the criminal case.

The sacked head of information systems, Clifford Sanderson (46) of Leicester, admitted conspiring to steal from the council and conspiracy to defraud the council.

Sanderson has also pleaded guilty to the possession of a sawn-off shotgun. No evidence was offered against him on five counts of making an indecent image of a child.

A regional sales manager for a company called Black Box Network Services, Steven Dudley (31) of Beeston, has admitted conspiring to steal from the council with Sanderson between January 1, 2001 and May 12, 2006.

The conspiracy relates to thefts of computer equipment and contract kickbacks.