Glyn Drabble sentenced to 38 months for £397,920 fraud

Between 19 May 2018 and 13 January 2022, Glyn Drabble defrauded a members’ social club on Long Street in Atherstone of £397,920 while working as its treasurer.

Drabble, aged 46 from Simmonds Way in Atherstone, utilised a variety of methods to personally profit from the earnings of the club, where he had been in position as treasurer since 2017.

He first raised suspicion during the transition to a new treasurer at the start of 2022.

The new treasurer noticed that a digital payment system set up by Drabble in 2021 was paying out to Drabble’s personal account. The system took payments by card at the bar and transferred the money to his account.

A total of £16,202.63 was transferred between 13 September 2021 and 12 January 2022.

Drabble also applied for a “bounce-back” loan following the COVID-19 pandemic to the tune of £40,000.

He misrepresented this figure to the club during meetings as £25,000.

As part of his role, Drabble added a mobile phone for his personal use to the club’s utilities without prior authorisation from the club.

Although Drabble claimed that the phone was a reasonable expense given his role, he did admit in interview that the £8,374.11 spent on phone bills between March 2020 and October 2021 was unreasonable.

Drabble said that the phone bill was primarily down to his use of his mobile phone while abroad, including an app in which gameplay consisted of gambling gems to improve and upgrade “hero” characters.

In addition, between January 2018 and January 2022, a total of £237,403.75 was paid directly from club coffers into Drabbles account in a series of suspicious transactions, which were masked using a reference that implied they were payments to suppliers of the club.

For the year ending December 2018, Drabble produced an inaccurate account of financial statements for the committee of the club, which was confirmed fraudulent by the accountant that Drabble claimed had written it.

Club minutes show that Drabble led the club to believe that their financial issues were due to banks not releasing funds.

An attempt to cover the outflow of cash to Drabble utilising an offshore account to the value of £123,916 was also discovered after an attempt to close the account was made.

In interview, Drabble admitted to taking an unknown amount of funds from the club in order to cover his gambling costs using a mobile app. He also later used a different betting service in an attempt to regain his losses.

At Warwick Crown Court on 19 January 2024, Glyn Drabble was sentenced to 38 months in prison for fraud by abuse of position under the Fraud Act 2006.

Investigating officer DC Shand said “Drabble was trusted to maintain the club’s finances, made up of the investments of its members and patrons, a trust that he has violated to frankly eye-watering levels.

“The amount that was taken in total was enough to purchase a family-sized house outright. It had been saved by the club to pay for building maintenance and provide the club with financial security, but it was flushed away buying fictional gems for heroes and living beyond his means.

“Meanwhile hospitality businesses and those employed by them were struggling with the COVID pandemic.

“Drabble will sit in prison for over three years, and we hope this is long enough for him to come face-to-face with the incredible selfishness of his actions.”