Bank worker stole signatures of 150 clients and sold them to criminal gang in £400,000 fraud but is spared jail because she has children

A NatWest banking officer who sold wealthy customers' details to criminals running a £400,000 fraud was spared jail because she has two young children.
Lekeshia Henry-Richards, 28, stole signatures of around 150 clients of the exclusive private banking service based in the City of London.
The information was used by a gang of swindlers to go on spending sprees at Apple and Selfridges stores in Beirut, Marseilles and London. One customer lost more than £130,000 before the scam was stopped in April this year.
The mother from Leytonstone, east London, was spared time in prison because of her two young children, aged eight years and 18 months.
She was sentenced at London’s Old Bailey to two years in jail suspended for two years - and ordered to carry out 90 hours of unpaid work.
Judge Gerald Gordon said: ‘You were convicted by the jury of conspiring with other people to commit fraud upon your employer NatWest bank, part of the Royal Bank of Scotland, by abusing your position as relationship advisor dealing with high value accounts at the branch in the City. 

Spared jail: Lekeshia Henry-Richards, 28, stole signatures of around 150 clients of the exclusive private banking service based in the City of London

‘Between March and November 2011 you obtained details, mainly customer signatures, which you supplied to others for them to use in persuading the bank that customer
change of address notifications were genuine when they were in fact fraudulent.
‘Credit cards, PIN and cheque books were sent and as a result of those details fraudsters could make use of the accounts and the resulting fraud netted the conspirators something in excess of £400,000.’
He added: ‘The reality seems to be that you got yourself into this for some reason, perhaps after some attempt to avoid it, and those you were supplying the information to had a strong hold over you. Your prolonged criminal conduct cost your employer a very large sum of money.

Bank: The judge said she conspired 'with other people to commit fraud upon your employer NatWest... by abusing your position as relationship advisor dealing with high value accounts at the branch in the City'

‘The offences were fraudulent from the outset, lasted a substantial period of time and involved a substantial number of financial victims, although the bank assumed the losses.
‘You were acting while in an important position of trust within the bank. It’s difficult to see that you have shown real understanding of the seriousness of what you have done.’
Judge Gordon said the offences were serious enough for Henry-Richards to be sent to prison but that he had to consider her son and daughter.
‘They both have their own real problems and each is at risk if you are sentenced to immediate custody,’ he said. ‘Their position is a factor that it is right to take into consideration today.
‘With considerable hesitation I have come to the view that the sentence I pass is two years imprisonment suspended for two years.’
Henry-Richards used customer account numbers, addresses and images of their signatures to order new credit cards. The replacement cards were then diverted to the criminal gang.
Signatures were obtained from the accounts records in breach of her position as an employee, put on the letter and sent to the bank.
The bank updated their records, taking the letters on trust with what they thought were genuine signatures. Some time later replacement credit cards and PINs were sent out.

Big money: In one case the fraudsters went on a spending spree of more than £130,000 in Beirut (left), Marseilles (right) and London

From there the cards were in the hands of fraudsters who in one case went on a spending spree of more than £130,000 in Beirut, Marseilles and London.
When the bank investigated the suspicious spending on that card they discovered around 150 other accounts had also been compromised.

On all of those accounts Henry-Richards had accessed information and on most she had accessed the signature image panel.

'You were acting while in an important position of trust within the bank. It’s difficult to see that you have shown real understanding of the seriousness of what you have done'
Lekeshia Henry-Richards

Text messages recovered by police from Henry-Richards’s mobile phone showed that she had been stealing the details to order.
When interviewed by police she claimed she had been threatened by a man called ‘Steve’ who she thought was a member of a gang.
Alexia Power, defending, said Henry-Richards has an eight-year-old son and baby daughter aged 18 months.
‘She is a single parent with two young children,’ she said. ‘She has suffered from mental health problems for a number of years and made numerous suicide attempts over the years.  
‘She is the sole carer of two dependent children. To separate her from her very young children could lead to serious harm.’
Henry-Richards was convicted after trial of conspiracy to commit fraud between March 2011 and April 2014. She was also made the subject of a two-year supervision order and 12-month women’s programme.

DM