Britain’s worst worker? Conman jailed once more for £90,000 theft

A serial conman dubbed Britain’s ‘worst-ever employee’ who once blew £170,000 of stolen money on a cocaine-fuelled weekend of sex with prostitutes is back behind bars for stealing £90,000 from his new employers.

Accountant Darren Carvill, 43, from Tovil, defrauded new bosses at a Holiday Inn and a travel agents ‘to make himself feel better’ after changing his name by deed poll.

He was previously jailed for two-and-a-half-years in 2019 for stealing more than £260,000 from a car servicing company, Mr Clutch.

Most of the sum was spent in a single weekend of partying, during which he was seen taking cocaine in a London club with up to ten female escorts. 

After his release from prison Carvill changed his surname to Medhurst, before landing a job as a finance assistant at a travel agency in Sevenoaks.

A court heard he stole £76,754 from 360 Travel Ltd between July and August 2022, paying it directly into his bank accounts – one of which was based in Hong Kong.

After the firm grew suspicious and Carvill was placed under investigation by the police, he took up a new job at a branch of Holiday Inn in Rochester.

In April 2023, he stole a further £13,000 from the hotel chain on the very day he was due to meet with managers who had discovered his criminal history.

None of the money, which the sentencing judge heard Carvill stole to ‘make himself feel better’, has been recovered. 

Prosecutor Stacey-Lee Holland said while working for the travel agency, Carvill would transfer thousands of pounds into his bank accounts and marking them as ‘expenses’ using the reference ‘director’.

But as the fraudster grew more confident, the prosecution said he began acting strangely and stopped turning up for work, which ultimately led to the discovery of the fraud. 

Ms Holland told the court: ‘He didn’t come into work, he stated his mum had dementia and that he was struggling. That became more frequent and it was only at that stage that the payments were noticed.

‘When confronted he stated he ‘had no choice’, and when interviewed voluntarily at the police station he admitted to taking the funds, that he had spent the money and there was none left.

‘He said he had been down at the time and this was a way to make himself feel better.’

Shortly after moving on to the Holiday Inn, bosses discovered Carvill’s criminal history and placed him on suspension, pending a scheduled meeting on April 28 last year to allow him to prove his identity.

The court heard how Carvill brazenly turned up in his work uniform ‘in the early hours’ with what the judge described as ‘a lot of front’.

The prosecutor said: ‘He entered the office, completed a refund of £9,784 and paid it onto his bank card. He did that almost immediately on having entered work that day.

‘He then went into the cash office, opened the safes and removed £3,261 in cash, hiding it in his jacket.

‘He was blatant in his actions because, as he left, he lifted his jacket, showing the cash, and said to a colleague ‘See you in the morning’ and left the hotel.’

A month later Carvill was arrested after police found him lying face-down in an intoxicated state at the side of a road in Maidstone. 

In court, he continued to claim he did not receive the £9,784 refund, adding: ‘I’m a fraudster and I don’t expect you to believe me.’

His defence lawyer Katie Bacon said her client had ‘deep remorse’ and had not ‘sought out’ financial roles since his release from prison.

She said the latest offending occured as he was grieving for his father, caring for his mother and then, following her death, living in hotels after being evicted from the family home.

‘He is not someone who continually seeks to offend but someone who has taken the wrong path at a time of difficulty,’ said Ms Bacon. 

She added he took money from Holiday Inn in a moment of ‘panic’ when he faced losing his job, and is now a ‘valued and supported’ member of staff at Toby Carvery.

Judge Julian Smith jailed Carvill for three years as he slammed his ‘breath-taking dishonesty’.

He said: ‘You are not a victim. Others are the victims. Your name carries that stain of dishonesty by what you did. By not declaring it is misrepresenting your background. You may want to wipe the slate clean. You can’t do that by not declaring.’

In total Carvill has 57 previous convictions, 52 of which are for fraud or fraud-related offences. 

In 2019 Maidstone Crown Court heard Carvill filed bogus payments to himself after claiming he was bullied at work. 

He admitted 18 counts of fraud and said he suffered from low self-esteem and became addicted to a night-life of high-class escort parties being surrounded by ‘glamorous’ people and drugs.

At the time, a source who witnessed Carvill splurging tens of thousands of poundssaid he attended a club in London called Platinum Lace. 

The source said Carvill also went into a room at another club, ‘with three escorts, [where] they drank champagne and used cocaine,’ adding: ‘By the end of the night he had nine or ten escorts in with him.’

While working for Mr Clutch, initially Carvill stole £40,000 but then repaid £36,500.

By October 2018 he took another £60,000. Then in August 2019, the accounts worker took £72,000, followed by £40,000, £10,000, another £10,000 and £12,000.

The court heard the defendant, who paid wages and bills for the company, had previous convictions for ripping off a previous employer.

In 2008 he was given a suspended year jail sentence at Maidstone Crown Court for embezzling a travel company out of money.