Washington man used company fuel card to fill friends' cars in £7,000 fraud to fund £200-a-week cocaine habit

Darren Stanley, 40, of Washington, used the card to fill up his own and friends’ cars at Shell garages and spent the money he pocketed towards a £200-a-week cocaine habit, Teesside Crown Court heard.

He also filled jerry cans with petrol and sold them as soon as he left the forecourt.

Prosecutor Harry Hadfield said the fraud went on for over four months and only came to an end when discrepancies were noticed in his receipts and invoices.

Paperwork revealed Stanley had been using the card up to three times a day.

Mr Hadfield said: “A data supplier to the company was going through the fuel receipts and matching them to the invoices from Shell and they just didn’t match.”

When the member of staff spoke to a garage in Darlington, a worker said Stanley went in “all the time” and would pay for other vehicles’ petrol with the card.

Mr Hadfield added: “On one day there were two transactions within five minutes.”

Stanley told police that friends would fill their cars with up to £80 of petrol on the card and pay him £60 which he kept.

Mr Hadfield added: “He said the money was spent on various things including cocaine. At the time he had a £200-a-week habit paid for by the fuel money.”

Stanley, of Romney Avenue, admitted fraud totalling £7,018 between October 2018 and February this year.

He was fired by the company and is now working for another firm.

Stephen Constantine said in mitigation that Stanley took cocaine to cope with his partner’s cancer diagnosis.

He said: “It was brazen, I can’t disagree, but, in my submission, sophisticated, no.

“He accepts he clearly wasn’t thinking rationally.”

Mr Constantine added Stanley had shown remorse and offered to pay the money back at £250 a month.

Deputy Circuit Judge Jim Spencer QC said “[It was] particularly brass-faced when he took two or three cars there on the same day.”

Addressing Stanley, he added: “I’m convinced that it would have gone on.”

Stanley was given 18 months prison suspended for two years.