An IT manager who defrauded his employers of £19m to fund his gambling addiction has been jailed for seven years.
Jonathan Revill, 38, forged signatures to sign off his own orders for computer equipment, which he then sold for fractions of the price on eBay or to other companies.
The 38-year-old made £5.6m over a three-year period from selling the equipment, which he used to fund his gambling habits, but only managed to buy a £500,000 home in West Yorkshire.
The father of one from Shepley pleaded guilty at Leeds Crown Court to four counts of fraud and three of transferring criminal property.
Revill was a service delivery systems manager at a Leeds-based subsidiary of GDF Suez, an energy company with a billion-popund turnover, but his £55,000 wage was not enough to cover his gambling.
Revill bet £11,200 on the outcome of a Roger Federer tennis match and £13,000 on a football match between England and Brazil.
His company only noticed the financial irregularities in May after an audit, by which time Revill had spent nearly all the cash he had made from selling the equipment.
After being granted bail upon his arrest on the condition that he stopped gambling and sought immediate help he spent £20,000 from an Isle of Man bank account in a single evening.
Benjamin Hargreaves, mitigating, said his client had tried to win the money back through gambling but was unsuccessful.
The court heard he did not tell his wife about his problem, and that she was also unaware of his bankruptcy in 2005.
