Married bank worker stole £2m then spent the lot on call girls: £1m went on ONE Thai escort

A married bank worker who stole more than £2million from Barclays and squandered it on prostitutes has been jailed for seven years.
John Skermer, 45, set up fake bank accounts with overdrafts of £1million, then siphoned the money into his personal account.
He spent almost all the cash on call girls, lavishing £1million on one escort alone. The computer geek spent months wining and dining the Thai woman, known as Kookai, travelling to London from his Cheshire home and taking her to expensive hotels and restaurants.

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John Skermer, with his wife Tracy, leaving court in Runcorn. Skermer stole more than £2million from Barclays and spent it on prostitutes

All the while Skermer's wife of ten years, Tracy, 33, with whom he has two young sons, was in the dark about his infidelity.
He explained nights away from the family in Widnes by saying he was 'working with the police' investigating fraud.
Skermer's position as head of an IT security team allowed him to steal more than £2.1million from the bank undetected over five years.

But the fraud was eventually discovered when a routine security update at the bank logged the fake accounts.
Bosses asked Skermer to investigate, but he confessed and police were called in.

Chester Crown Court heard that Skermer, who pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud, also spent some money on luxury golfing days, tickets to see Manchester United and a £35,000 Audi 4x4.

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Skermer paid some of the cash to Thai call girl Auchareeya Pruankaewmanee (pictured)

He began working as a software engineer for Barclays in 2008, identifying and eliminating 'ghost' accounts which had been created but not allocated to any customer.
However he then worked out how to alter such accounts, setting them up to transfer money into his own account.
Investigators from the City of London police's fraud unit discovered that he had paid at least ten different call girls with the bank's cash.
It included £996,999 to one Thai prostitute named Auchareeya Pruankaewmanee, 43, who was also known as Kookai.

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Skermer's wife Tracy outside court (left) and Skermer (right), who pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud

She was based in London and he had a relationship with her for much of last year. The former waitress apparently turned to escorting seven years ago after she split from her husband Ryan Osborne, 38, from Barnsley.
Her former father-in-law, Alan Osborne, 59, said last night that she was a 'lovely' but 'naive' girl.
Skermer told the escorts he was a wealthy businessman, and often transferred money from the bank directly into their accounts for payment.
A source close to the investigation told the Daily Mail: 'He spent time on this Thai escort, wining and dining her, but there were also around ten others. Mrs Skermer had no idea what was going on, she is another victim of his scam.'
David Rose, defending, told the court that once bosses discovered the ghost accounts, Skermer 'knew the game was up'. He confessed and helped investigators recoup £722,000 of the stolen cash, and handed over his car.
Sentencing Skermer last week, Mukhtar Hussain, the recorder at Chester, said it was 'clear' that the fraud was 'well thought out'.
Mrs Skermer, a maths teacher, is understood to be 'devastated' by her husband's actions, which she found out about just before Christmas. The marital home, a large £400,000 four-bedroomed townhouse on a smart new estate, is up for sale.
Detective Constable Graeme Ord, from the City of London police, said: 'Skermer has rightly received a long prison sentence for this large-scale fraud. We hope this case shows the cooperation between banks and police, and acts as a deterrent to others.'
Last night Miss Pruankaewmanee could not be contacted for comment.

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