A Surbiton payroll supervisor who clocked up £1,300 of premium rate phone bills in four months wrongly paid himself more than £8,000 to cover his debts.

In April 2005 Justin Knight, of Ditton Road, while working at Kingston temping agency Kelly Services, made three payments totalling £8,862.72 to his bank account through fraudulent payments to two former employees and one current member of staff.

Kingston Crown Court heard on Friday how 34-year-old Knight was fired in July 2005 and it was then that his illegal activities were discovered.

He had set up fraudulent one-off payments from the company to three existing or ex-employees in April 2005 but had sent them all to his bank account.

Kelly Services new payroll manager's suspicions were aroused when he saw that Knight had not registered the address or National Insurance number of the three employees on the system and that all the payments were destined for the same account.

Prosecutor David Baird described the fraud as "unsophisticated" but said if Knight had not been fired he probably would not have been caught.

Kate Wilkinson, defending, said that in 2005 while depressed and suffering from alcohol-related problems, Knight had racked up large credit card debts. She said he still owed some £12,000 to credit card companies.

She said: "His depression was such that between January and April 2005 he had incurred more than £1,300 of debts just by calling premium rate phone lines."

Knight, who now works as a financial analyst for Cisco Systems, pleaded guilty to three counts of false accounting involving a breach of trust.

He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for each of the three counts, to run concurrently, and that was suspended for two years. He was ordered to do 120 hours' unpaid community work and pay a compensation order of £5,000.

Recorder M Stoole said: "I'm sure you understand that this is absolutely your last chance. If you commit any crime like this again you will be straight inside."