Banker took more than £11,000 from accounts of Santander customers in Walsall
A banker from Willenhall who siphoned off £11,800 from the accounts of customers from the branch she worked at has avoided jail.
Anisha Safri, aged 28, who was working as a personal banker at Santander in Park Street, completed 14 different transactions before a customer cottoned onto her fraudulent activities.
The mother-of-two, from Park Street, paid back some of the cash with interest to try and cover her tracks after carrying out the fraud between December 1 last year and July 31 this year.
Prosecutor Jonathan Veasey-Pugh told Wolverhampton Crown Court: "This defendant was a personal banker at the Walsall branch of Santander.
"A huge degree of trust was placed in her to carry out that role, much more than that of an ordinary banker. She accessed customers' accounts and transferred money into two different accounts of hers.
"Some months after she started doing this, customers became suspicious and she was reported.
"It was found that she had been taking the money from customers' accounts.
"She had transferred back around £4,500. Some of that was the same amount that had been taken in the first place, but some customers were paid more money than she took for interest.
"There is somewhere in the region of £7,000 to £7,400 that has not yet been repaid.
"I understand all monies owed to the customers has been repaid, either by her or the bank.
"So the bank is the party that has been left out of pocket."
Safri pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position on August 31.
Judge Tregilgas-Davey told Safri: "A significant degree of trust was placed in you.
"It was inevitable that what you were doing was always going to be discovered in time
"I believe this offence is so serious that it goes beyond the custody threshold, but I am not going to send you to prison today."
She was given a 10-month prison term, suspended for two years and 150 hours unpaid work.
