Director is jailed for £1m theft

A Black Country-based company director who stole more than £1 million from his Staffordshire firm and blew it on luxuries such as performance cars and homes for members of his family has been jailed for four-and-a-half years.

Relatives of Anthony Fellows who reaped the rewards of his fraud now face having their homes repossessed.

The company from which he stole – Halsall Electricals in Cannock – was forced to lay off nearly 100 sub-contractors and survived going under by the skin of its teeth, Stafford Crown Court heard yesterday.

Over a 15-month period, Fellows stole £1,143,306 while employed as the company's financial director on a salary of £130,000.

He used the stolen cash to fund a luxury lifestyle, buying cars, including a Mercedes and a Porsche, and high-value jewellery for himself as well as "gifts" of homes and paying off mortgages for relatives.

Fellows, aged 48, of Bonneville Close, Tipton, admitted one charge of theft from the company between September 2006 and last December.

Judge John Maxwell told him: "You were on just over £130,000 in your capacity as finance director. You might have thought that was a very handsome reward for the work you did but you broke their trust in a disastrous way. You applied that stolen money to a large extent, on a very lavish lifestyle," the judge added.

"You squandered it on expensive living, but you also lavished it on your family."

Judge Maxwell said that this was one of the rare cases where the maximum sentence for an offence should be imposed.

For theft, that is seven years, less the compulsory discount for a guilty plea.

Miss Joanne Wallbanks, defending, told the court that Fellows had been of hitherto good character and had made a full confession to the police.