Barclays bankers jailed for £1.4m mob fraud of elderly savers

A Barclays manager and a personal banker have been jailed for a £1.4m fraud of elderly customers, in a crime linked to organised gangs.

Bank manager Karl Dean Edwards, 43, and personal banker Andrew Waters, 26, were paid by an organised crime team to siphon money from the bank accounts of wealthy customers, according to the Daily Mail.

Police said the bankers used false identification documents and forged papers to set up accounts in the names of the victims' relatives.

They would then move money from the victims' accounts into the false accounts before transferring the sums into an offshore bank account.

Edwards, of Crookbarrow Road, Norton, Worcester, was manager at the Hagley Road branch of Barclays in Birmingham, where the victims banked. Waters, of London Road, Norbury, Croydon, worked at the firm's Croydon branch.

Joseph Murphy, 36, and Nathan Denton, 37, who were part of the organised crime team, were sentenced alongside the bankers.

Detective Constable Simon Hughes from the economic crime team said: "The bankers deliberately targeted elderly wealthy victims who rarely checked their bank accounts.

"One victim had not been to the bank for over 20 years. The bankers used their position of trust and access to confidential customer information as a vital link in the fraud."

Edwards and Waters were each sentenced to five years imprisonment at Birmingham Crown Court. Both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud at earlier hearings following an investigation by West Midlands Police.

Murphy, from Carshalton, Surrey, was imprisoned for three years and nine months. Denton, from Water Orton, Staffordshire, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years.