A bank worker who hatched a scheme to try and steal £300,000 from wealthy customers has been jailed for 18 months.
Bryan Mearns, 43, was employed with global giants HSBC where he dealt with phone inquiries and had access to personal details of well-off clients.
Over the course of a year, seven customers reported suspicious transactions or attempted transactions on their accounts.
An investigation was launched, and it was discovered Mearns had dealt with each of them in his post as an HSBC Premier account handler.
HSBC attempted to haul him before a disciplinary committee but he failed to show up at their offices in High Blantyre, Lanarkshire, and was sacked before police were brought in.
Mearns, of Aberdeen, later admitted fraudulently transferring £295,842.21 from HSBC between November 2010 and December 2011.
Now he has been jailed for 18 months.
Ian Brechany, defending, said: “This was an offence which took place between 2010 and 2011 and is of some history.
“The dream figure here for him was always £10,000 which he needed to pay off debts he had acquired.”
The court heard Mearns tried to take £160,000 from 69-year-old Pighi Gibson, £50,000 from Paul Vlcek, 66, £30,000 from Rohit Singh, 39, and £16,842.21 from Dr Almundena Sevilla Sanz.
Mearns also tried to remove £10,000 from Malcolm and Lynda Snowdon, £10,000 from Olive Price, 77, and £9,000 from Constance Lin Hui Hu.
He had managed to get unsuspecting clients to divulge personal details to him over the phone which he then noted.
Sheriff Thomas Millar said: “Over a considerable period of time you used your position as an associate with HSBC to access client data, account numbers and personal information, to try and take money out of their accounts which was only stopped by the banks anti-fraud system.
“It was a considerable effort and an clearly an enormous amount of planning went into this.”
