Criminals locked up in Greater Manchester this week May 9

Three violent thugs who robbed a young family's home and attacked their dog so badly she lost an eye are among the criminals jailed in Manchester this week. Prison terms were also handed to a sick paedophile and his girlfriend who sexually abused two young girls over the course of half a decade.

A pervert, who changed their name to Rachel and was charged with 21 child sex offences, was also locked up after being caught out by a vigilante group. Jail sentences are handed out to some of the worst offenders each week and Manchester Evening News reporters are in court to cover the most serious cases.

Here are some of the criminals locked up in Greater Manchester this week...

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A paralegal who was addicted to gambling has been jailed for stealing £438,000 from a law firm. Paul Young, 38, from Middleton, simply directed interim payments intended for innocent victims of road crashes into his bank accounts.

A court heard the victim of his fraud was his Manchester-based employer Berrymans Lace Mawer (BLM), which specialises in defending motoring claims on behalf of insurance companies.

Young, a father-of-two who earned £24,500-a-year as a paralegal at the firm's 'volume motor team' in Manchester city centre, was caught making one payment to the wrong payee but bosses didn't realise it was his account and dismissed it as a 'simple error'. It meant he could continue to defraud his employer, taking advantage of 'flaws in their system', a court was told.

Young dealt with solicitors who were making personal injury and vehicle damage claims to insurance giant, Aviva, which in turn was 'trusting the authenticity of the