A FORMER recycling boss who was involved in a £500,000 stolen bread baskets scam has been ordered to pay back nearly £10,000.

Paul Matthews, 48, was jailed for three years in May 2014 after admitting his part in the scam which saw 150,000 of baskets leased by Warburtons stolen. Two other men were jailed for a combined seven and a half years for their part in the theft.

The baskets were sold to PM Plastics in Sudellside Street, Darwen, a business then owned by Matthews.

During a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing at Preston Crown Court on Friday Judge Simon Newell ordered Matthews to pay back £9,970 within three months or face a further six months in jail.

During the criminal trial in 2014, Burnley Crown Court heard how Paul Rogers, then a delivery driver for the family-owned company, and his then bakery boss, £29,000-a-year team manager, Robert Cooper, breached their bosses trust by stealing the baskets.

The pair had hatched the plot along with accomplice, father-of-three, Matthews, of Jubilee Close in Darwen, after Warburtons started recycling its bread baskets in November 2010 and a new universal basket was introduced by supplier Bakers Basco.

From September 2011, Bakers Basco noticed a shortage of baskets, in particular in the north west. Warburtons appeared to have 90,000 baskets unaccounted for.

Rogers and Cooper helped themselves to bread baskets worth more than £560,000 to sell on for recycling and to line their own pockets.

Matthews received and granulated 230 tonnes of £500-a-tonne-stolen baskets.

After the theft was discovered, Bakers Basco ordered 150,000 new baskets and 4,000 dollies to replenish their stock. The replacement cost for this came to £562,700, however, Warburtons negotiated a settlement of £220,000.

In March 2012, Bakers Basco received an anonymous phone call, telling them there was a large number of its baskets at PM Plastics.

Craig Hodges, a recovery investigator, went to the recycling firm a week later, saw the baskets and also some being chipped for recycling. He called the police.

The court was told Matthews was arrested and officers seized more than 5,340 baskets, three tonnes of chipped plastic and nuts, bolts and wheels.

Former soldier and father-of-four Rogers, of Rochdale, was locked up for 42 months, and Cooper, of Winchester Way, Breightmet, Bolton, was sent down for four years.