A CARLISLE sub-contractor who submitted false invoices for work he hadn’t done, pocketing more than £17,000 in the process, has been spared immediate prison.
Andrew Craig Grieves, 48, was engaged by a construction company to carry out duties on the city’s Harraby community college campus during early 2015.
Grieves did work there in early April but later that month phoned in sick, and didn’t work on the site for that firm again. Yet for months after that Grieves submitted a string of bogus invoices. He forged the signature of a construction company employee who noted when the matter was later brought to his attention that Tipp-
Ex had been used as the crime was committed, and his name misspelt.
He also confirmed he hadn’t authorised payments which totalled £17,080.97.
Grieves later admitted an offence of fraud by false representation and, Carlisle Crown Court heard today (WED), committed the offence amid a relationship breakdown while in financial trouble with mortgage arrears.
However, Recorder Mark Rhind was told he had since turned a corner, been rehabilitated and was in work with a healthy disposable income. A 14-month jail term was suspended for two years and Grieves, of Mount Pleasant Road, Carlisle, was also ordered to complete a three-month night time curfew and pay monthly compensation instalments totalling £9,600.
“It wasn’t sophisticated or particularly complicated and it was easily discovered,” Recorder Rhind told Grieves of the fraud. “But it did go on for a long time; week after week, month after month, you were taking this money that you weren’t entitled to.”
