Southwark crown court heard on Monday that the former corporal Aaron Stelmach-Purdie, 34, had run the scam for just over a year between November 2014 and January 2016 while he worked in central London as a clerk at the MoD’s administrative headquarters.

Stelmach-Purdie, from Oldham in Lancashire, manipulated the department’s online platform for the management of staff expenses and allowance claims. He defrauded the government out of £911,677, keeping £557,093 for himself, the court was told.

The defendant, who was dismissed from the armed forces in January 2016 after he was convicted and sentenced on four counts of sexual activity with a child, used his joint personal administration (JPA) account, a system the UK armed forces used to pay staff salaries and process expenses, to make fraudulent claims.