A bank worker who plundered more than £44,000 from the till has been ordered to pay back just £1 of his ill-gotten gains.

John Davies siphoned the cash from the small Bradford on Avon branch of the HSBC bank over a four-month period to fund his gambling habit.

But despite a judge ruling he benefitted from his crime to the tune of £44,058.66, financial investigators found he did not have any assets.

So under the Proceeds of Crime Act he was ordered to pay a nominal £1 within the next seven days or face a further 28 days in custody. The order means that should he come into money in the future, he could still be pursued by the authorities to repay the tens of thousands he stole.

Davies, of Catalina Court, Bowerhill, Melksham, was brought to Swindon Crown Court from Dartmoor prison on Tuesday for the hearing.

The 26-year-old was jailed for two-and-a-half years last September after pleading guilty to a charge of theft on the morning of trial.

He was the only full time cashier at the bank, which had one other till used by a part-time worker and a third which hadn’t been used for many years.

Each of the tills was run as if it were a cash account and should balance with the amount of cash in it.

But an audit in November 2008 found till three at the branch was running an overdraft of £42,240.

That meant the sum should have been physically sitting in the redundant till, but it was found the money had gone in 36 inter till transfers.

All but one of those went to till one at the bank, which was used by Davies, while the other was signed off in a colleague’s name to till two.

However she was not working at the time of the transaction, and three minutes 23 seconds after the cash went in, it was paid to Davies’ credit card and another of his accounts.

None of the money has ever been recovered and the court heard it must have left the branch by being physically removed.

James Martin, defending, said his client had not come clean about what he had done because he had been hiding the reason for his deceit.

He said Davies was addicted to gambling at the time and had been keeping it from his family.

After Davies started to take the money he said he tried to ‘chase his losses’ in a bid to get it back but instead found himself getting in deeper. He said Davies was a man of previous good character who would find it hard to get work in the future.