A crook who lived the high life after defrauding the firm he worked for has been ordered to hand over £281,000 of crime profits.
Paul Galbraith, 53, has to pay up the sum after prosecutors targeted his ill-gotten gains.
He siphoned off £513,200 while working as a project manager in Whitburn, West Lothian, but blew the lot and ended up overdrawn.
Galbraith, who was caged for five years for the crimes in 2019, bought his daughter a £3610 Louis Vuitton handbag in Cancun, Mexico, and spent over £10,000 at the Hugo Boss store in Glasgow, over a period of eight months.
He also spent £4695 with Watches of Switzerland, over £4000 at 29 Private Members Club in Glasgow’s Royal Exchange Square, £15,000 on flights with Emirates and Thomas Cook in six months, and £3072 in a day at Atlantis, The Palm – a five-star hotel in Dubai.
He also made 10 withdrawals of £500 in a month, lifted £2000 on one occasion, and spent so much he ended up £2.58 overdrawn – the day before a fraudulent payment of £38,200 hit the account.
He loved the high life so much, his mum Dora told police officers investigating him: “It always had to be the best of gear.
"With my other son, you could go to Primark and buy him a shirt and he’d be over the moon.
"With Paul, you’d have to go to Topman.”
At a Proceeds of Crime hearing at Paisley Sheriff Court this week Galbraith, of Inverkip, Inverclyde, agreed to hand over £281,790.33 within the next six months.
The court heard the sum available was from the value of his home.
His crime profits were paid into a building society account in Galbraith’s elderly mother’s name, after he submitted invoices from a non-existent firm for work which had not been carried out.
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