A project manager who took advantage of lax NHS security to plunder a hospital and sell thousands of pounds worth of brand new computer gear has dodged jail.
David Stuart Gillies was unmasked when a fellow IT worker on his lunch break noticed scores of NHS-spec hard-drives in a shop window.
Gillies, 50, stole more than 200 hard drives and 90 memory modules over five months from a store at the former Stirling Community Hospital, where they were being kept for an IT upgrade.
He sold the gear, worth £13,000, to CeX stores across Stirlingshire and Fife to finance the cost of running two homes after his marriage collapsed.
Worker spotted stolen goods in window
The drives had been kept at the back of a store at the hospital.
Stirling Sheriff Court was told the store was protected with a key-operated padlock and a pin-code lock but a number of people, including Gillies, had access.
In July 2019, “unable to cope financially” with the costs of his marriage breakdown, Gillies began taking hard-drives and memory modules from the store, initially selling them to the CeX store in Dunfermline with the intention of buying them back before they were sold on.
The illegal enterprise “snowballed” however and Gillies began raiding the stockroom to supply CeX stores in Stirling and his home town of Falkirk.
The court heard that by chance in December 2019 an IT supervisor from the hospital – doing Saturday shopping in Stirling’s Thistles Centre – spotted a number of drives in CeX.
Prosecutor Michael Maguire said: “He noticed they were similar to items currently in use as part of the NHS Forth Valley IT upgrade.”
Four days later, taking his lunch break in the shopping centre, the supervisor noted “a larger quantity of similar hard drives and memory were on sale”.
Mr Maguire said: “He raised his suspicions later that day.”
A check that afternoon revealed hundreds of items were missing.
CeX said Gillies had supplied them, and he was arrested.
Had intended buying equipment back
Gillies, a first offender, of New Carron, Falkirk, pled guilty to the thefts, committed between July 10 and December 12, 2019.
Murray Aitken, defending, said the university-educated father-of-two had worked for the NHS for 26 years.
He said: “He was a trusted staff member.
“He has brought embarrassment and shame on himself.”
He said Gillies had separated from his wife in 2016.
“He left the family home but all the financial agreements were in his name and he was still supporting his wife and his family in their accommodation while having to pay for his own.
“He didn’t know where to get financial help and he took these items to keep himself above water.
“It started at a low level, then it snowballed.
“He took items to this premises, which effectively is like a pawnbroker – although you get money for them, they’re not sold immediately and his initial intention was that he would get money from another source and buy them back.
“That fell throug and quickly it spiralled.”
Deprived ‘stretched’ NHS of resources
Mr Aitken added: “The removal of these items didn’t have any direct impact on the operating of the organisation.
“If anything’s come of this, the security arrangements have been changed to ensure nothing like this can happen again.
“Mr Gillies is now looking for alternative employment, which will be difficult to get at the same level as he was employed previously, for obvious reasons.”
Sheriff Derek Hamilton said the offence was “clearly thought about”.
He said: “He spread his operation from Stirling up to Dunfermline.”
He sentenced Gillies to carry out 235 hours of unpaid work and a six-month restriction of liberty order, during which he will have to wear an electronic tag and not leave his home between 8pm and 8am.
He told him: “You deprived the NHS of valuable resources at a time when they are stretched enough.
“Perhaps their records and their security measures were not what they should have been and it almost makes it worse that you took advantage of that.
“Systematically stealing from the NHS, when everyone knows the state the NHS is in, is completely unacceptable.”
No longer in work
Gillies refused to comment as he left the court.
NHS Forth Valley declined to respond to a request to comment on the fact Gillies was able to get away with the thefts for as long as he did.
A spokesperson said only: “We can confirm that this individual is no longer employed by NHS Forth Valley.”
