Revill's Range

From the Huddersfield Daily Examiner today, comes another sorry tale of greed and addiction. I liked the line that the subject bet on sports 'ranging from tennis to football" as if sports 'range' in that way. Is cricket within that range or does it fit before tennis or after football?

An IT manager ordered £18m worth of computer equipment through his employer’s accounts and gambled away the £5m he made from selling it, a court heard.

Jonathan Revill, from Shepley, was employed as a service delivery systems manager at a Leeds subsidiary company of GDF Suez – one of the world’s biggest energy companies with a billion pound turnover.

He was earning a £55,000 a year salary with bonus and a £400 a month car allowance but had a “serious addiction to gambling,” Mehran Nassiri prosecuting told Leeds Crown Court yesterday.

Less than a year after he started working for the firm he realised he could place orders that would not be noticed.

Although he was limited to £3,000 purchases without further approval he forged signatures and over the next three years ordered £18,976,062.63 worth of equipment.

That was delivered either to his home in Huddersfield or to storage unit and quickly sold for less than its value either on E-bay or to six different companies.

Revill’s dishonesty only came to light earlier this year when an audit revealed financial irregularities but by then he had gambled away nearly all of the £5.6m raised. The only asset now left is his £500,000 house.

Even when he was bailed while police inquiries were continuing he spent £2,500 on further gambling.

It is understood Revill bet on sports ranging from tennis to football.

Revill, 38, of Marsh Lane, Shepley, was jailed for a total of seven years after he admitted four charges of fraud and three transferring criminal property.

Sentencing him Judge Geoffrey Marson QC said: “In three years you used 104 invoices to order property to the value of almost £19m. It is a vast amount of money.

“You were addicted to gambling – all the money has gone on gambling save for your house which you will now lose.”

He said fortunately the company had a one billion pound turnover so was not going to be forced into liquidation by its loss.

Ben Hargreaves, representing Revill, said he was made bankrupt in 2005 and was then out of work for four months and got into debt before he joined GDF Suez Energy UK in 2009. He quickly realised there was an opportunity for him to be dishonest.

He said it was a simple fraud “not ingenuous” involving him creating invoices and forging signatures on them. The items were sent to his home or the yellow Storage Box Company in Leeds from which he tried to sell them quickly taking a loss of some 70% on the cost.

Mr Hargreaves added: “The money has been spent on gambling, that is his tragic downfall.”

He said Revill had tried to win big to pay back the company and at one time had £3m in his account “trying to get myself out of the hole I’d dug” but that had gone.

He was relieved to be finally caught and was shocked at the total involved.

Det Chief Insp Mark Griffin, who heads the Leeds District Proceeds of Crime Act Team, said: “Revill abused his position of trust and defrauded his employer on a massive scale to feed his addiction to online gambling.

“His actions have destroyed his life and affected a number of businesses. This case clearly highlights the very serious consequences of gambling addiction and illustrates how effective the Proceeds of Crime Act is in helping us to tackle offences of this nature”.