AN ex-policeman jailed for a £1.1 million pound plus fraud on a York insurance company has told a judge he did not get a penny out of it.

Disgraced Pocklington PC Stephen Spellacy alleged he now has no assets left to his name and that shortly before his arrest, he was so short of money, he needed a £5,000 loan from a friend.

Both he and fellow fraudster John Michael Taylor, 37, who worked at Aviva, then known as Norwich Union, claimed they did not have detailed arrangements as to how they were to receive their share of the money after Taylor diverted it from the company's accounts and sent it to be laundered.

“It seems quite sophisticated, but it was quite slapdash,” Spellacy said at Leeds Crown Court.

But co-conspirator and professional money launderer Keith Swift claimed he handed over £409,000 of the money in cash to two men linked to Spellacy and believed it had gone to Spellacy and Taylor.

Taylor also denies receiving any money from the fraud and, like Spellacy, has accused Swift of holding out on them.

“Is there no honour among thieves left?” barrister Nigel Edwards asked his client, Swift.

“No,”" replied Swift.

The prosecution claims all three are concealing some of the fraud’s proceeds and that £692,000 stolen from Norwich Union is unaccounted for.

It is asking Recorder Mark Bury to make confiscation orders of £800,000 plus against each conspirator. Taylor and Spellacy have admitted both the £1.1 million fraud and a separate £350,000 fraud against the same company and Swift has admitted another unconnected fraud.

Taylor, of Nunthorpe Crescent, South Bank, claimed he hid his share of the smaller fraud in a bag under the eaves of his garage, and went on trips to London, each time taking £3,000 or so in cash with him.

He denied prosecution suggestions he had concealed money in wads of cash in London safe deposit boxes or in accounts controlled by his Brazilian- born escort girlfriend or abroad in Thailand.

On his 39th birthday, Spellacy travelled from the prison where he is serving eight and a half years to tell the court he had suffered from mental problems since being injured in the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989.

He started taking cocaine five years before his arrest and at its peak was spending £1,000 a week on the illegal drug.

He kept tens of thousands of pounds from the smaller Aviva fraud hidden in plastic bags between his garden fence and a neighbour’s shed and claimed he spent it on “just living”, including trips to London with £1,500 to £2,000 in cash in his pocket.

He also stayed at trendy hotels where he ran up bills of £1,000 a night. He alleged he was so depressed in the months leading up to his arrest, he wanted to shoot himself, and bought a gun.

Swift, 49, of Queen Elizabeth Drive, Normanton, West Yorkshire, claimed that when he told the men linked to Spellacy he wanted to stop laundering the £1.1 million, he was threatened and told he was in “big trouble because there was a police officer involved”.

The hearing continues. Judgement is not expected until next week.