A Harrogate man who stole more than £50,000 of goods from his employer has been ordered to repay a solitary pound under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Aaren Gasson, 38, was jailed for 10 months in February after he admitted an audacious scam in which he stole items including shower mixers from Abacus Direct Ltd, a manufacturer and supplier of bathroom products in Copgrove, near Boroughbridge, over a period of nearly three years.

Today at York Crown Court, Gasson appeared for a financial confiscation hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) to determine how much he should repay.

The prosecution said although the total value of the stolen goods came to just over £50,097 – what is known as the “benefit amount” – Gasson’s available amount was just £1.

Judge Sean Morris, the Recorder of York, duly made a nominal confiscation order for £1 as that was the only money available to the Harrogate man.

At the sentence hearing at the same court in February, prosecutor Kelly Clarke said that Gasson had stolen at least £50,000 of goods from his employer and then sold them on.

Gasson was working as a warehouse picker-and-packer at the firm where he plundered items from the stock area on no fewer than 200 occasions between January 2021 and the end of October 2023.

Ms Clarke said that Gasson’s “simple method” was “picking and packing (the items) in the warehouse without scanning them”, boxing them up with a label, then sending the packages on for sale using the company’s own DPD delivery service.

Security cameras

It wasn’t until November 2023 that he was rumbled after hidden security cameras were installed in the warehouse to catch him out.

She said the most frequently stolen item was a shower mixer with a retail value of more than £537.

Gasson, who had worked at the firm for 15 years, began selling the items on eBay but then started receiving repeat orders from a man in Essex who asked him if he had “anything else like that”.

He then delivered the stolen goods to that individual in Romford – using the company’s own delivery service.

Realising “something was wrong”, the company director checked CCTV footage in the warehouse and noticed that Gasson had been “keeping out of the way” of the cameras.

The director, whose “suspicions were raised”, then set up hidden cameras to catch Gasson “effectively red-handed”.

Throughout the thieving spree, Gasson had sent out some 200 parcels he had stolen from the company.

The father-of-one was arrested after the director called police to say that his employee had been stealing from the company.

Gasson, of Euclid Avenue, Harrogate, was charged with theft by employee and admitted the offence on the basis that the value of goods stolen was £50,000 and not a “much higher” amount as initially alleged by the prosecution.

The court heard that the “male recipient” in Essex was never charged with any offence after insisting he thought he was buying legitimate items.

The company boss said that Gasson’s systematic thieving had “come at such a cost” to the business which had to take “further safeguarding measures” to ensure it didn’t happen again.

Kevin Blount, Gasson’s solicitor advocate, said his client was in debt at the time because he was caring for his father which meant he had to take time off work.

Gasson, who had separated from his partner, ended up in a “financial mess and didn’t know how to get out of it”.

It was then that he began stealing products from his employer and advertised them for sale on eBay.

At the sentence hearing nearly three months ago, Gasson - who had effectively been stealing from his former employer for about two-and-a-half years given the time he had taken off work with a broken shoulder - was told that, under new legislation, he would serve less than half of the 10-month jail sentence behind bars before being released on prison licence.