An IT boss who splashed out on diamonds, holidays, cars, and a revamp of his home with more than £500,000 stolen from a leading City asset management firm has been jailed.
Anthony Murrell, 44, siphoned off the money from Legal and General Investment Management over three years, buying non-existent computer cables and paying the money to a fake company in his wife’s name.
Murrell admitted he started stealing money to prop up a disastrous cottage conversion project after costs spiralled, and also paid for family holidays, hotel stays, cars and £17,000 worth of jewellery.
At Inner London crown court yesterday, his barrister Alison Levitt QC was forced to admit Murrell’s lies had continued with a forged character reference from his new employers which had been submitted to the court.
“Mr Murrell wrote it himself because he was so frightened of going to prison,” she said.
Jailing Murrell for three years and four months, Judge Usha Karu, the Recorder of Southwark, said: “This was deliberate and calculated fraud, and you must have believed you wouldn’t be caught.”
Prosecutor Carolina Cabral said Murrell used his trusted role to order cabling from a fake company called Lillyputts, submitting invoices in his wife’s name and funnelling money to a bank account he controlled.
He managed to steal £564,480 through the fraud, which began in October 2014 and only ended when he left his job in June 2017.
An investigation had begun in May 2017 over excessive spending at Murrell’s fake company but he attempted to cover his tracks by using the details of a nursery school and a stables which shared the Lillyputts name to answer probing questions.
Ms Levitt told the court Murrell, a father-of-six, ran into money troubles when merging two Essex cottages into his “dream home”, and he has now sold the property for £1.2 million to pay back Legal and General.
“It seems in all likelihood his marriage is also gone — his wife is taking steps to divorce him,” she added.
Murrell, who moved to Perth and Kinross in Scotland with his family, admitted one charge of fraud by false representation.
