A 53-year-old man who tricked an old man and a bank clerk and defrauded tens of thousands of euro was jailed for 10 years today.

Joseph Francis Scerri, who worked for 23 years with Mid-Med/HSBC, defrauded Mario Gauci of Birkirkara of more than €100,000 after tricking him into giving him power of attorney and then falsely claiming he was using his money on investments and on a car import business.

Scerri issued a number of cheques for a total amount of €134,430 in Mr Gauci's name on an APS account and tricked an HSBC cashier and former colleague, Marcette Cefai, into cashing them immediately and handing him the cash even though they normally took three days to be cleared via APS.

HSBC only recovered some of the funds, but when €56,000 remained outstanding, Ms Cefai was sacked and €56,000 were taken from her bank pension fund. 

Ms Cefai subsequently launched legal proceedings against Mr Scerri.

She told the court how Mr Scerri had called at the bank branch where she used to work and claimed that after leaving the bank, he launched a successful business in Bulgaria.

He then handed her some cheques and although she reminded him that they took three days to be cleared, he tricked her into trusting him and she handed him the cash immediately. She had done so, she said, because she had had no problems with other cheques he presented in the past.

When some of the cheques could not be honoured - because there were insufficient funds in Mario Gauci's accounts, the bank contacted Mr Scerri and recovered €35,000.

However €56,190 were not recovered.

Mr Gauci told the police how he had trusted Mr Scerri because he was a former bank employee of long standing. Mr Scerri initially invited him, in 2008, to invest Lm800 in oil companies and the Vatican.

In 2011 Mr Scerri persuaded him to give him power of attorney because he found it difficult to understand bank documents.

When he was interviewed by the police, Mr Scerri claimed that he had a car importation business which failed and he had money problems.

He admitted having cashed Mr Gauci's cheques and having used some of Mr Gauci's funds to pay off other people. When asked how much money he owed Mr Gauci, he said it exceeded €100,000.

In court, Mr Scerri said he had agreed with Mr Gauci that they should team up on a car importation business and that was why he was given power of attorney. He, however, presented no documents to back up his version. 

The court said his explanations did not make sense, and had not been proven.

More than €100,000 had been taken from a bank account without a single car having been imported, the court observed.

There was no doubt, the court said, that Mr Scerri was a confidence trickster. He was therefore jailed for 10 years.