A SERIAL conman who tried to cash a stolen cheque for £25,000 at an Accrington bank is behind bars for a year.

Burnley Crown Court heard how Ian Milnthorpe, 43, tried to get the money at NatWest in a campaign of deceit in which he tried to withdraw more than £28,000 and was successful in obtaining £1,300.

The hearing was told the defendant now had an offer of employment at his auntie's accountancy firm.

Milnthorpe, who struck four times in Yorkshire and Lancashire, claimed he had been paid to do it by others, but was said to be too scared to give police information about them.

At the time of the offences last year he was said to have been an alcoholic, depressed and vulnerable but a judge said he had known what he was doing, his behaviour had been persistent and nothing seemed to stop him.

Milnthorpe, of Greenhill Road, Eastmoor, Wakefield, had admitted four fraud allegations and had been committed for sentence by magistrates.

The court heard the cheque in the Accrington scam attempt had been stolen from a business. Milnthorpe had a record going back to 1989 and had been remanded in custody since his arrest last November 2.

The defendant's barrister told the hearing there was an element of Milnthorpe being taken advantage of by others more criminally sophisticated.

He took all the risk for relatively modest reward.

Sentencing, Judge Beverley Lunt said: “It was money laundering.

"It wasn't fraud. The sentence has to punish you and deter others from doing what you have done.”