91Èȱ¬

A County Armagh man who sold off more than £300,000 worth of items belonging to the Almac group in order to "fund a more lavish lifestyle" has been given a 22-month jail sentence.

Daniel Robinson, 26, from Castle Rise in Tandragee, was sentenced at Craigavon Crown Court.

He had previously pleaded guilty to a charge of fraud by abusing his position of trust within the Almac Group.

Robinson had been employed as a material stores technician for Almac.

The judge ordered Robinson to serve half of the sentence in prison and half under supervised licence conditions.

He said that while he accepted Robinson had "held his hands up from the start" and had entered a guilty plea at the earlier opportunity, it was also correct that he was "effectively caught red-handed".

He emphasised that he was sentencing on the basis of a loss of £335,000 to the Almac group rather than the benefit of £94,530 to Robinson.

Robinson had previously entered a guilty plea to the single charge against him of fraud by abusing his position of trust within the Almac group between 1 January, 2020 and 26 May, 2022.

The offences came to light after Ketamine, a Class B drug, was found in the staff toilets and with Robinson suspected of responsibility.

Robinson was suspended and an investigation ensued.

As part of that investigation, the judge said, Robinson's line manager interrogated his work email account and discovered a number of discrepancies and oddities in that Robinson had been ordering items not usually associated with the Almac group.

These included a television, an electric power shower, a Bosch drill, a pressure washer and an Apple MacBook.

The judge said a PC graphics card had been ordered by Robinson, an item not carried by Almac but routinely used in computer gaming.

Once the card had been ordered at a cost of £2,000, Robinson sold it on to CeX, a retailer that deals in pre-owned electronics, for far less than its true value.

Almac's investigations uncovered that between January 2020 and May 2022, Robinson had ordered about £350,000 worth of items, that he had eight different CeX accounts and within that period, some £94,530 had been lodged into his account either by CeX or in cash.

The judge said that Robinson had confessed "he used that benefit to employ a personal trainer, paid for flight to visit his girlfriend in Liverpool" and to buy things for his family.

Initially, he did not disclose that he was funding a drug habit for fear of his father finding out, but it later transpired that he had an £800 per week Ketamine addiction.

The judge told the court there were multiple aggravating features including the breach of trust over and above what is entailed in the offence itself, the length of time over which the frauds were perpetrated and that the cash was used to pay debts and fund a more lavish lifestyle than the defendant could afford.

In mitigation, however, was Robinson's lack of record, clear and genuine remorse and that he had made "full and frank admissions" from the outset.

The judge ordered that the items Robinson bought for his family be forfeited so that they can be sold at a police auction.