AN electrical engineer who carried out a £23,000 petty-cash scam at Oswaldtwistle Mills — to meet payday-loan requirements — has kept his freedom.

Matthew Anderton, 32, carried out an elaborate fraud over three years, making bogus claims for cabling and CCTV equipment, Burnley Crown Court was told.

But accountants at the Oswaldtwistle store eventually noticed the high value of claims being made for petty cash over the past year, the court heard.

And when an investigation was launched, they were all traced back to Anderton, who immediately confessed to what he had done and was suspended.

Prosecutor Stephen Parker said general manager Nicholas Pitman then started to look back over the financial records for the previous years.

Eventually it was discovered that all of the claims related to two firms, Security Manufacturers Ltd and Atoc Communications.

On closer examination, the paperwork for both companies looked identical except for the names.

And the VAT numbers for each enterprise were also found to be the same.

Later Anderton confessed that he had drafted the invoices on his home computer and then sent them to the accounts department, for a few hundred pounds a time. Anderton, of Marlowe Avenue, Accrington, who admitted theft, was given a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months.

He was ordered to do 140 hours’ community service and pay full compensation to the company’s insurers. Mark Stuart, defending, said his client was married in 2009 but divorced by 2011, and along with his former wife had accumulated a series of debts.

He began to take out payday loans with the likes of Wonga and eventually could not make the repayments, the court heard.

The money had been used to meet his debts, provide furniture for his new home and buy treats for his son.

Mr Stuart said: “He tried one of these claims out as a one-off, found that it worked, and then succumbed to temptation and did it again.”

The court heard that since the offence the defendant, now living at home, had started out as a self-employed electrical engineer and had repaid around £3,800 to the firm.