Thames Valley Police Copyright: Thames Valley Police

More from Judge Martin Beddoe on the bank scam that cost many small business owners their livelihoods.

The judge has just sentenced six people for the crime, including two former HBOS managers, one of who was bribed with sex with prostitutes.

At the sentencing, Judge Beddoe said the case involved an "utterly corrupt senior bank manager letting rapaciously greedy people get their hands on vast amounts of bank money and their tentacles into ordinary and honest businesses".

"Letting them rip apart those businesses without a thought for the lives and livelihoods of those affected in order to satisfy their rapacious desire for money and the trappings of wealth."

He said Scourfield, who has been sentenced to 11 years and three months in jail, had not shown a "shred of remorse" for ruining the lives of the employers and employees of those companies.

"People haven't just lost money but in some instances their homes, family and friends.

"People who could have expected to be comfortable in retirement were left cheated, defeated and penniless."

The judge described Mills as "a thoroughly corrupt and devious man, adept at exploiting the weaknesses of others".