TWO bank workers who stole around £320,000 from the accounts of three Manchester City footballers have been jailed.
Paul Sherwood, aged 26, of Simister Green, Prestwich, and Paul Hanley, aged 20, of Whitworth Street, Manchester, made a series of withdrawals from the Co-op Bank accounts of Djamel Belmadi, Daniel Van Buyten and Vincente Vuoso.
At Manchester Crown Court on Monday, Sherwood was jailed for 32 months while Hanley was sentenced to 20 months.
The pair persuaded two 21-year-old friends to let them use their bank accounts to launder the stolen cash.
The players were at the club for a short time and did not use the accounts for day-to-day purposes, so did not check their balances.
The court heard that Sherwood was the mastermind behind the scam and recruited his own boss, Hanley.
The cash was stolen between December, 2002, and February, 2005, from accounts left open by the players after they moved from the UK.
Sherwood gambled most of his cash away.
The missing money was uncovered during an internal audit.
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