A former university laboratory technician fraudulently obtained a £2,600 piece of equipment in an act of revenge for being dismissed, a Court heard.

Bradford Crown Court was told today that Mark Fellows, 44, ordered a welding machine from a company which supplied the University of Bradford, where he had worked for a number of years.

Prosecutor Dave MacKay said Fellows used a false name, along with a mobile phone number, a university phone number and an official order number, to place the order with the British Oxygen Company, of Bradford, last November.

He collected the welding machine the following day. It was never recovered.

The university queried the BOC invoice and the defendant was traced through the mobile phone and arrested.

Mr MacKay said Fellows told police he could not clearly remember the incident because of depression and medication he was taking at the time.

Fellows, of Manor Park Road, Cleckheaton, pleaded guilty to two charges of fraud.

Judge John Potter told him: “Your dismissal from work seems to have inspired this offending.

“The inspiration for behaving in this way, on the face of it entirely out of character, was a rather misguided and, for you, unfortunate sense of revenge against the university employers who had dismissed you. That was an extremely foolish thing to do.”

Judge Potter said the fraud was “akin to a breach of trust,” but he said it lacked sophistication, and Fellows had pleaded guilty and was of previous good character.

He sentenced him to a 12-month community order with a requirement to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.