Three Ulster Bank messengers who stole hundreds of thousand of pounds they were meant to burn were each jailed for two and a half years today.
The Lord Chief Justice also criticised the bank's "rather lax and slipshod procedures".
Sir Brian Kerr told the trio, 42-year-old former police reservist Andrew Godfrey from Hampton Park, Bangor, and Belfastmen Liam O'Rawe (42) of Downfine Park, and Paul O'Hare (40) from Linden Gardens the bank's failures could not excuse their serious breach of trust in succumbing to temptation.
Defence lawyers for the trio, who admitted stealing a total of £770,119.19 sterling had told Belfast Crown Court the messengers had asked for CCTV to be placed in the 'burn room' for their own protection and for better maintenance on the incinerator.
Despite these appeals to management and to their union, nothing was done and the trio took advantage of the situation, enabling them to siphon off over three quarters of a million pounds between November 2001 and February the following year.
Their scam soon came undone when suspicions arose when vast sums were lodged in a building society account and in a police sting operation two of the men were caught, ironically, on hidden cameras the men had asked to be installed.
The Lord Chief Justice said while the suggestion their crimes were largely opportunistic in nature was "true to some extent only. The defendants took advantage of rather lax and slipshod procedures at the bank and seized the chance, when it first presented itself, to take money that should have been incinerated".