A council worker who stole £1.06 million from his employers to settle gambling debts has had his prison sentence cut.
Financial computing specialist Mark Conway diverted public money to his own accounts after losing cash betting online with the bookie William Hill.
The 55-year-old defrauded Dundee City Council of £1,065,085 before he was caught in 2016.
He was sentenced to five years and four months in August the following year for his crime.
However, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission sent the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh.
Lawyers at the legal watchdog concluded that Conway may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.
The SCCRC said judge Graeme Buchanan QC didn’t know the council had recovered the stolen cash from its insurers and from William Hill.
The commission believed that had Judge Buchanan known this, he may have given Conway a shorter custodial term.
Appeal judges Lord Carloway, Lord Menzies and Lord Turnbull agreed the sentence imposed on Conway was too harsh when compared to terms given to people convicted of similar offences and reduced his sentence to four years.
Lord Turnbull – who gave the judgment – wrote: “Despite the limitations of the information available, the picture which emerges reasonably clearly from this collection of cases involving similar conduct to that engaged in by the appellant, is that the sentence selected in his case stands out as being high.
“The sentence imposed shall be quashed and in its place there shall be substituted a sentence of four years.”
Conway, formerly of Brechin, made entries in the council’s computer system pretending to represent sums due to genuine suppliers.
Suspicions were aroused when an employee noticed payment to a building firm had been sent to a Nationwide building society account.
