Disgraced accountant Anthony Seymour is facing the prospect of a lengthy prison term after embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds from a local company.

Over a two and a half year period, the 39-year-old stole about £350,000 from Bonar Automation, the Cheney Manor-based arm of a Leeds firm, magistrates were told.

Richard Thomas, prosecuting, said Seymour, of Tracy Close, Abbey Meads, had started as an assistant to the company accountant and was given the senior position on a trial basis when the accountant left.

He said:"He proved himself to the company and they allowed him to keep the job after he held it as a temporary post.

"What he then did was inflate the costs of projects undertaken by the company. That would leave a surplus in the company's accounts which he would divert into his own account to avoid its detection."

In order to cover his tracks he said Seymour would adjust or shred company documents as well as remove cheque book stubs to ensure that his deceit would remain uncovered by colleagues.

"In effect the police tell me he stole some £350,000 or thereabouts from his employers," Mr Thomas told the court.

Seymour, who has no previous convictions of any sort, pleaded guilty to 17 counts of theft and 17 counts of false accounting. All the offences took place between June 1997 and February this year.

The sums taken at any one time ranged from £898 in July 1997 up to £41,000 a year later in July 1998.

After considering the facts of the case, magistrates declined jurisdiction and sent Seymour to the crown court where he will be sentenced by a judge.

They said that the high value of the theft, the serious breech of the employer's trust and degree of planning, were their reasons for feeling their powers of sentencing up to six months in custody were inadequate.