A Soham man who defrauded his Cambridge employer Marshalls Aersospace of thousands of pounds has been ordered to pay nearly £17,000 in compensation.

Andrew Barwick, 26, of Windmill Close, had admitted taking advantage of his position as telecommunications manager to gain a total of £45,678.84, and was jailed for a year in May 2015.

The former soldier – who did a tour in Iraq – admitted one count of fraud by abuse of position between May 14, 2010 and January 1, 2015.

Barwick had been in charge of buying mobile phone handsets for staff – but sold them off to recycling firms. He netted the proceeds.

During Friday’s hearing at Cambridge Crown Court Barwick was ordered to repay £16,632.50 – his total available assets – by way of compensation.

He will have three months to pay the sum, or be handed an additional six-month sentence.

DI Day said:: “These orders send out a strong message that we will use the Proceeds of Crime Act wherever possible to ensure that those criminals who benefit from their actions are stripped of any profit they derive from their unlawful activities.

“We hope this acts as a warning to anyone who is tempted to carry out fraudulent activities for financial gain – not only will you be arrested and prosecuted, you’ll also be made to pay the money back.”

*David Barrowclough, 49, a former Fellow of a University of Cambridge college, has been ordered to pay back more than £150,000 of ill-gotten gains to the Heritage Lottery Fund.

He’d been convicted of nine counts of false accounting after he duped the fund into providing financial support for archaeological projects across the country that never existed, using forged details over an eight-year period.

The scholar had voluntarily repaid around £70,000 to the fund after being jailed for six years for the offences in September 2015.

At a Proceeds of Crime hearing last Monday at Huntingdon Crown Court, Barrowclough was ordered to repay the remaining £152,587.42 by way of confiscation order.

He has three months to pay this sum or face a further 18 months in prison