Two men from Stoke-on-Trent have been jailed for tricking a family business in a £1m invoice scam.

Jason Huntley, 52, of Longton, and Kenneth Lawton, 58, from Milton, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit fraud through false representation.

The pair were involved in inflating invoices and delivery notes at a family-owned business which supplies mailing bags and boxes, police said.

They were both sentenced at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court on Monday.

Huntley was jailed for 41 months, while Lawton was sentenced to 42 months in prison.

Huntley was employed by the Stoke-on-Trent company between January 2014 and April 2019, and had the responsibility of purchasing stock provided by another company, Staffordshire Police said.

His criminal dealings came to light after an internal audit in late 2018 – early 2019, found inflated delivery notes and invoices from the company providing the mailing bags and boxes had been signed off, the force added.

Stock checks then confirmed suspicions when more than two million mail bags and boxes which should have been stored in the company’s warehouse were not there.

The value from the extra mailing bags and boxes was in excess of £1.1m, officers said, and saw Huntley arrested in April 2019.

Staffordshire Police said he admitted to establishing an agreement with Lawton, owner of the company that provided the bags and boxes, whereby Huntley would generate excessive purchase orders for bags and boxes, sign false receipts for deliveries of lower quantities, and pass on invoices to the accounts department with inflated values.

Huntley also admitted he was given envelopes of cash on a weekly basis by Lawton, the force said.

Det Con Kelly Harvey, of the Fraud Finance and Cyber Invest team, said: “Huntley spotted an opportunity to betray the trust placed upon him by his employer and together with Lawton hatched a plan to defraud the family company that Huntley worked for.

“For the first time in more than 20 years, the company had to tell the staff they could not have a pay rise, or a Christmas bonus that year, which many of the staff and their families relied upon as part of their salaries, all while Huntley and Lawton were enjoying the cash they had defrauded the victims of.”