A GAMBLING addict who conned £118,000 out of his employers by fiddling customers’ invoices has been jailed for more than three years.

Fraudster Robert Gibbs, of Wellstye Green, Basildon, was working as a salesman for Heat Pumps for Pools, owned by David Morris and based in Ramsden Bellhouse, between March 2014 and September 2015.

Basildon Crown Court heard the 35-year-old started altering the payment details on invoices to his own bank account in what was described as a “simple” fraud.

Adam Budworth, prosecuting, said: “The victim was a sole trader. It doesn’t appear to have affected his business fatally but it does appear to have affected his business. It must have had a significant impact.”

Mr Budworth said the fraud was uncovered after Mr Morris’ bank noticed irregularities. The court heard Gibbs admitted the fraud immediately but took longer to own up to the full amounts involved.

Carly Dennis, mitigating, said Gibbs started the scam after accidentally entering a single incorrect digit on a customer’s invoice.

The customer subsequently paid £3,000 into a stranger’s bank account and Gibbs was unable to retrieve the money.

Miss Dennis said: “He was frightened to admit his mistake and decided to take an alternative measure to recoup the money.”

The court heard this involved frequently altering invoices so money was paid directly into his bank account. He then gambled the money and paid cash back to the firm with his winnings.

However, Miss Dennis said it was “never enough” and Gibbs “became entrenched in this periodical cycle of fraud.”

She added: “It was something that got increasingly out of control.”

The court Gibbs has an “entrenched gambling addiction” and has five previous fraud convictions.

He was already serving an 18 month suspended sentence for a £35,000 eBay scam at the time of the offences.

Judge David Pugh jailed Gibbs for two years and four months for the fraud and imposed nine months for the suspended sentence, to run consecutively, making three years and one month in total.