Warrant issued for arrest of IT specialist (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Warrant issued for arrest of IT specialist

4:58pm Thursday 1st March 2007 in Swindon By Gazette Reporter

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of an IT specialist who stole laptops from Nationwide and sold them on e-bay.

Graeme Leighfield twice escaped jail last year after being convicted of theft and then failing to do his community order.

But the 21-year-old today failed to turn up at Swindon Crown Court after again being breached by the probation service.

And Judge Douglas Field issued a warrant for his arrest and detention after hearing letters were being returned marked "not known at this address".

Leighfield, who worked as a system specialist at the building society headquarters, was ordered to do 150 hours' community service and a year of probation in August.

Within a month of being given the chance he stopped attending his probation appointments. But after hearing that he had worked well on his community service and when he did attend probation a judge decided not to jail him but to add seven hours to the penalty in November.

At that hearing Leighfield told the court how his life had been thrown into chaos following his conviction for stealing the six computers.

He said having fired him Nationwide had called in all his credit card debts, overdraft and loans, leaving him penniless.

At the same time he said he started to have contact with his biological father for the first time in more than 16 years.

He said when his mother got fed up with letters from debt recovery companies arriving at the house he moved in with his dad.

Leighfield insisted he had told the probation service but the first he found out about being in breach was a couple of days before the hearing through a redirected letter.

He said: "I am more than happy to carry out the order. It is a punishment that has been given to me and I accept that whole heartedly."

As well as losing his job at Nationwide he said he also lost work at Tyco after they found out about his past. He was caught after a family complained to the police, having paid him £195 and not receiving the computer.

Then when he was questioned by police he suggested others may have taken the machines, leading to them having to suffer the humiliation of also being arrested.

One of Leighfield's jobs was to assess old machines to see if they could be salvaged before they went to a company who sold them on for the building society.

But he took six of them home and tried to sell them himself after carrying out some work on them.

Leighfield, formerly of Glevum Road, Stratton, and Blunsdon Road, had pleaded guilty to six thefts and one count of obtaining money by deception.