A JAILED fraudster who ripped off his employer for £652,000 must sell his vast CD collection to help pay back more than £90,000 of his ill-gotten gains.

Riccardo Sorice, 59, who is serving five years behind bars, was brought back to Bradford Crown Court yesterday for a confiscation hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

The accounts manager transferred £1,164,910 belonging to Bradford firm Pro Audio Systems Ltd into eight personal accounts between February 2008 and February 2015, resulting in losses to the company of £652,382.

The Recorder of Bradford, Judge Roger Thomas QC, has ordered Sorice to stump up £90,381, the sum total of his available assets.

Heather Gilmore, for the Crown, said the money would come from real estate and the sale of Sorice’s 20,000-strong CD collection. The father-of-two was given three months to raise the money or face a further 12 months behind bars.

Sorice had already been convicted of dishonesty offences on three previous occasions when he fleeced Pro Audi Systems Ltd, where he was treated like one of the family.

In 2008 he lied to his bosses about travelling to Italy to care for his dying father when he was actually serving a prison sentence.

When he was jailed in March this year, prosecutor Alisha Kaye said Sorice, of Cliff Crescent, Halifax, had full autonomy of Pro Audio Systems Ltd’s finances.

He had paid back £100,000 into a company account, also loaning money stolen from the firm back to them during periods of cashflow problems.

Eight bank accounts belonging to Sorice had seen activity on a daily basis, with some money being paid back into Pro Audio accounts to try to indicate legitimate transactions.

In a statement to the court, Pro Audio director Brian Lumb said the financial impact of Sorice’s fraud on the firm, based at Blynk House on Young Street, off Thornton Road, had been “quite staggering”.

“It is all very hard to take in. He completely betrayed the trust of the company. Every day he was smiling, while stripping the company of money,” he said.

The 20,000 CDs were never used, the court heard, and it was a mystery where the rest of the money went.