text: An Old Bailey judge has blasted his junior colleague for ‘taking his eye off the ball’ and passing an 'unlawful' sentence when letting a BT manager dodge jail for a £28,000 expenses scam. Wheelchair-bound  Christopher Starrs, 50, was allowed to go free from court with just a suspended jail sentence in January after admitting his part in a two-and-a-half year con against his employer BT. Starrs, along with fellow BT Openreach manager Phillip Tamplin, invented clamped cars, overtime hours and damage to home owners’ property during broadband installation, and paid off engineers to help them make the fake claims. Blasted: Judge Nicholas Cooke QC (left) blasted his junior colleague Recorder Stuart Trimmer QC (right) for 'taking his eye off the ball' when he sentenced Christopher Starrs in January this year . Both Starrs and Tamplin, 53, who made £124,000 from the con, admitted submitting the string of bogus expenses. Tamplin was jailed for two years at January's sentencing hearing, but Mr Recorder Stuart Trimmer QC spared Starrs jail as an ‘act of mercy’ - although he ordered him to repay the money he took and pay a £1,500 fine. However, senior Judge Nicholas Cooke QC has now said the sentence was ‘unlawful’ - and added Starrs should have been sent to prison for his crimes. ‘It was an unlawful sentence passed and now I need to do something to put it right, because it was negligence on the parties involved in the matter,’ he said. ‘He was mercifully dealt with, sadly by a judge who didn’t have his eye on the ball.’ The judge told Mark Haslam, defending: ‘The sentence was wrong but that’s a matter of personal opinion. ‘Your client was fortunate to not go straight to prison. ‘What the Recorder did was to impose a package of sentencing options that wasn’t available to him. ‘No one appears to have noticed that the sentencing imposed on Mr Starrs was unlawful. ‘I am sorry to be the headmaster but we really don’t want this sort of thing.’ Fraud: Wheelchair-bound Starrs, 50, was a manager with BT who admitted defrauding the company of £28,000 over two years . The Recorder, who is the head of 4 Bream Buildings chambers and took the Silk in 2006, gave Starrs a 16-month jail sentence suspended for two years and ordered to pay a fine, and allowed the confiscation proceeds to continue. But Judge Cooke said it was not possible to imposed a financial penalty at the same time as postponing a confiscation order. Turning his fire on the barristers who were at the sentencing hearing, he added: ‘This is supposed to be a centre of excellence, when you expect the representatives to point out what we can and can’t do. ‘The judge should have been told what his powers were.’ Prosecutor John Ojakovoh said Starrs offered a ‘blank cheque’ at sentencing and has already paid back the £28,000 he stole. After the judge heard the CPS will now drop the confiscation proceedings, he said the original sentence will stand, quipping: ‘He no doubt thanks his lucky stars.’ Both barristers admitted they had failed to spot the sentencing blunder at the time. The main fraudulent claim was for BT vehicles which had been ‘clamped’ by parking authorities. BT Openreach workers are allowed to claim back parking tickets on expenses as they are regularly forced to park their vans illegally to carry out their work. The company pays out around £1million in fines in London alone every year. Starrs and Tamplin used an authentic clamping ticket to reproduce reams of duplicates. Sentencing Recorder Trimmer, who has led a string of high-profile Serious Fraud Office prosecutions in the last two years, said: ‘This was a sophisticated fraud perpetrated over a very long period of time. ‘It involved over 100 or so false claims, made within the context of a large organisation that was open to fraudulent activity. ‘Both of you were in the position of managers within that organisation and both well knew how open the organisation was to fraudulent activity. ‘You both knew how it could be conducted, concealed and be made to benefit each of you personally.’ Starrs, of Northolt, Middlesex, who had worked at BT since 1988, was excused from sitting in the dock because he is in a wheelchair. He was not at court today due to a mix-up over whether he was required to attend.
target: Christopher Starrs was spared jail in an 'act of mercy' by judge in January .
  But senior judge has now said his colleague took 'his eye off the ball'
  Nicholas Cooke QC said wheelchair-bound Starrs should have been jailed .
  But added Starrs should thank his lucky stars as sentence allowed to stand .