A RECRUITMENT consultant swindled nearly £28,000 from two companies he worked for by inventing employees and pocketing their pay.

Matthew Murphy was awaiting sentence for his fraud at a North Yorkshire firm when he did exactly the same thing at a Stockton company.

Teesside Crown Court heard how the 29-year-old rose to responsible posts and committed frauds totalling £27,615 between 2006 and last year.

He became a recruitment consultant, then a director, of Enterprise Recruitment in Stokesley, one of whose clients was Cleveland Potash.

Murphy created fictitious contracts and used a time sheet template for the bogus workers to get money from the company’s bankers.

When the bank tried to recover the money from Cleveland Potash, discrepancies over a nine-month period came to light, the court heard.

Murphy was arrested and told police that he had borrowed money from a loan shark, who came up with the idea of the “ghost” workers.

While he was on bail, Murphy applied for and got a job as a recruitment consultant with Temp Recruitment, in Stockton, in June last year.

Bosses were so impressed with the contracts he appeared to be bringing in that they set up an office in Darlington and asked Murphy to run it.

Rosalind Scott Bell, prosecuting, said he carried out an identical fraud – submitting hundreds of false requests for payment to two payroll firms.

Following his second arrest, Murphy had 190 cheques for a total of more than £70,800 in the glove box of his car, Mrs Scott Bell told the court.

Murphy, of Albert Road, Eston, Middlesbrough, admitted four charges of fraud and one of having a false instrument, and was jailed for 18 months.

Judge Peter Fox told him: “Bold as brass or cool as a cucumber, you started off again, almost an identical fraud with different victims.

“You seem incapable, at least for the present, of keeping your hands off other people’s money.”

Murphy made £27,615 from the crimes, but his apparent lack of money now means he cannot be ordered to compensate victims.

But Judge Fox ruled that if the fraudster comes into money or assets in the future, the authorities can pursue him to make him pay.

Joanne Kidd, in mitigation, described Murphy’s plan as short-term, “deeply inept” and certain to be detected as he was “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.

She told the court that Murphy’s partner has since left him, taking their young child, and that he was a “broken man”.