A former Air Canada employee who used 18 false frequent flyer accounts to collect over 5 million miles was sentenced in June to nine months in Jail.

Satpal Singh, a customer sales agent with Air Canada in the U.K., used his access to customer information to collect the illicit miles.

Singh, 24, would identify passengers who shared his name and who did not have access to frequent flyer travel, and would then take their points.

Singh reportedly used the miles to treat himself and friends to numerous first-class trips. He had scheduled a trip to Singapore for two days after the date of his arrest.

Isleworth Crown Court in London heard that his two-year “betrayal of trust” was so “sophisticated and sustained” that police did not have the resources to investigate it in detail. But officers, concentrating on a three-month period, found 18 accounts. They also found he had made numerous alterations to computer logs to cover his tracks.

Andrew Evans, for the prosecution, said the evidence suggested that had he not been caught, his crimes would have “escalated.”

In rejecting pleas for a non-custodial sentence, Judge Jonathan Lowen told Singh: “You developed a sophisticated routine which involved careful forethought and planning and a sustained and repeated campaign … over about two years.”