Assistant spent

A POSTMISTRESS'S daughter who used customers' money in a £15,000 scam has narrowly escaped a jail sentence.

Heather Gilbertson was working as an assistant at her mother's post office, in Church Fenton, near Selby, when she got into financial difficulties after moving to a new house.

Charles Watson, prosecuting, said Gilbertson would keep money which had been given to her by customers to be paid into their Girobank accounts.

She would spend the cash and then use money later deposited by other customers to replace it.

The scam was uncovered when the audit manager of a company told Consignia that a number of deposits made by his company had arrived late into their account.

Mr Watson told Selby magistrates that Gilbertson concealed Girobank deposit slips for between four and 28 days between July 20 and September 21 last year.

The defendant admitted she had deliberately suppressed deposits and used them to pay bills. The money involved amounted to more than £15,000.

He said: "She got a loan to pay back money she had taken from the post office but the amount she owed kept growing.

"She finally used a loan from her father to repay all the money she had taken."

Mother-of-two Gilbertson, 35, of Lockton Court, Church Fenton, admitted three counts of concealing valuable documents and asked for 15 similar offences to be considered.

Martin Legg, mitigating, said the amount his client owed the post office at any one time was £5,000.

He said: "She was giving herself a form of rolling credit using someone else's money."

Gilbertson and her husband, a long-distance lorry driver, had moved to a new house. This had doubled their mortgage repayments and she had wanted new carpets for her home. She had committed the offences as a short-term solution to financial problems which had "spiralled out of control."

Mr Legg said: "She felt at the time she had no choice. She didn't feel able to talk to her husband about it, and she took the wrong option."

Gilbertson was given a three-month jail sentence suspended for a year and ordered to pay £320 costs. Presiding magistrate Pam Middlebrook said: "This was a serious breach of trust.

"It was premeditated and you deliberately repeated the actions again and again."

Updated: 15:23 Wednesday, May 29, 2002