A bank worker who reclaimed the cost of a lavish break to Dubai after claiming his travel documents never turned up – only to be rumbled when bosses saw pictures of him enjoying the sunshine break on Facebook – has been spared jail.
Adam Fraser also made a string of other bogus claims from Bank of Scotland – where he was working at the time – for “disputed transactions”.
Bosses became suspicious after Fraser claimed someone had been using his account to withdraw cash and buy items in transactions he was not making.
In one claim he told the bank his holiday to Dubai had been cancelled because his travel documents hadn’t arrived in time.
But investigators needed only to turn to Fraser’s publicly accessible Facebook page to find out he was lying. They spotted images of him enjoying his trip to the Emirate.
Fiscal depute Laura Bruce told Dundee Sheriff Court that Fraser had exploited a loophole he had discovered while working in the Bank of Scotland call centre on West Marketgait.
In total he obtained £5,746.42 by fraud by telling the bank his card had been used without his knowledge and consent for purchasing goods and services, and that he had been the repeated victim of fraud.
Fraser, 23, of Liff, pleaded guilty on summary complaint to a charge that between March 7 and August 31 2016, at his home at The Steading, North Mains of Liff, at West Marketgait, and elsewhere, he formed a fraudulent scheme to obtain money.
He admitted that he repeatedly pretended to Lloyds Banking Group that the card associated with his account with the Bank of Scotland had been used without his knowledge and consent for the purposes of purchasing goods and services and transferring money and that he had been a repeated victim of fraud.
However, the truth was he had made the transactions reported as fraudulent and induced Lloyds Banking Group to reimburse the amounts claimed and obtained £5,746.42 by fraud.
Sheriff Alastair Carmichael imposed a community payback order with 18 months’ supervision, 180 hours of unpaid work and a compensation order for £5,746.42.
He said: “This is a serious matter.
“It was a relatively complex fraud over a period of time.”
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