THEY swindled overtime payments worth more than £48,000 from a Huddersfield engineering firm.

But now two men have been ordered to pay back the money – or face jail.

The pair stole the money from Cummins Turbo Technologies, of St Andrew’s Road, by claiming bogus overtime payments for three years.

The two men, John Webster and Andrew Johnston, have been given 56 days to pay compensation to their former employers or face 12 months in prison.

At a confiscation hearing at Bradford Crown Court yesterday, Judge Shaun Spencer QC ordered Webster and Johnston to pay back the money.

Forty-eight-year-old Webster, of St Peter’s Crescent, Kirkheaton, and 53-year old Johnston, of Long Lane, Dalton, had been defrauding the company for three years between 2004 and 2007.

They manipulated the time management system, paying themselves overtime to which they were not entitled.

They were charged in July 2009 but prior to their trial in March last year the pair had pleaded guilty to charges of theft, false accounting and conspiracy to steal.

Both were given suspended sentences of eight months and 200 hours of unpaid work, but a further investigation by the Kirklees Proceeds of Crime Team began after the case.

That led to the confiscation orders being made.

Webster, who was found to have benefited to the sum of £28,469.56, was ordered to pay that as compensation to Cummins.

Johnston was ordered to pay £20,346.20 in compensation. Both have 56 days to pay the full sum or face a 12-month prison sentence.

A spokesman for the Kirklees Proceeds of Crime Team, part of West Yorkshire Police, said: “We hope we have shown here that crime doesn’t pay and that fraud is a very serious matter that the police will not allow to go unpunished.

“Webster and Johnston had defrauded their employer of over £48,000 in un-worked overtime. They will now have less than two months to pay that money back, before they face a year in prison.”