A FORMER police sergeant has denied carrying out an £85,000 bank fraud involving a private Cumbrian ambulance service.

Dalvin Dawkins, 54, of Sedbergh, is on trial at Carlisle Crown Court over allegations he was part of a fraud involving the company Sedbergh Lifeline.

Mr Dawkins, whose son Matthew Dawkins has already admitted carrying out the fraud, is in the dock with his son’s partner Zarina Gray, who also denies involvement.

The jury has heard that all three were involved with Sedbergh Lifeline - a private ambulance service which provides first aid care, training and equipment from an office in Main Street, Sedbergh, where they all live.

It is alleged they took advantage of the complexities of the firm’s credit card payment system by putting through bogus transactions.

Matthew Dawkins, 21, denied 33 charges of fraud when his trial began on Monday.

But on Tuesday, in what Judge Paul Batty QC described to the jury as ‘a rather dramatic development’, he changed all his pleas to guilty.

He will be sentenced later for those offences – and also for an associated offence of money laundering, which he had already admitted.

The trial of his father, Dalvin Dawkins, 54, and his partner, 20-year-old Zarina Gray, is continuing.

Dalvin Dawkins, who was a police sergeant at Morecambe at the time of the alleged offences, has denied one charge of fraud, involving £1,500, one charge of laundering £84,050 of criminal money and five of possessing a total of £22,675 he knew had come from criminal activity.

Gray has pleaded not guilty to 13 charges of fraud involving a total of £19,510 and one of laundering £84,050.

Prosecuting counsel Arthur Gibson told the jury that the firm’s credit/debit card payment terminal was installed in February 2009.

The firm told the bank its annual turnover was about £90,000 a year, of which about £30,000 could be expected to be paid by credit or debit cards.

But, Mr Gibson said, in the next 50 days more than £84,000-worth of transactions were put through the terminal.

A bank specialist noted that 80 of 99 transactions had been made using three cards – all belonging to Matthew Dawkins, he said.

And 51 transactions had been given the same authorisation code which could not have happened if they had been legitimate.

Mr Gibson said that in the period in which the firm claimed to have netted £84,119 in card payments, the true figure was less than £70.

He alleged the defendants had used their own cards to take advantage of the payments system, which allowed them to be paid before the banks issuing the cards were alerted the transactions were fraudulent.

The money would be paid either into the firm’s bank account and withdrawn almost immediately or into their own accounts, he alleged.

“Each of them, to a greater or lesser degree, was involved in the fraudulent use of the cards to obtain money and in the use of that money for their own purposes,” he said.

“All three are responsible for dealing with some or all of the proceeds of the fraud.”

He said it would not have been possible for just one of them to be involved without the others knowing.

The trial continues.

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