A Post Office manageress who embezzled more than £100,000 from a charity and her elderly friend has been sent to prison for three years and four months.
Sub-post office boss Carol Oswald frittered the money on internet betting and claimed she kept going to try to win back money to pay for the losses the business was racking up.
As well as embezzling money from her work and a community environmental charity, Oswald also stole more than £8,000 from the elderly woman who trusted her to run the post office.
She stole directly from 81-year-old Jean Johnson but also left the pensioner who owned the post office business liable for the £100,000 Oswald embezzled from the branch.
Solicitor Cliff Culley told Perth Sheriff Court: “The reality is that she wasn’t capable of looking after the Post Office and it ran into financial difficulties.
“She had difficulties dealing with that and unfortunately gambled money in the hope that the winnings would resolve the financial difficulties.
“That gambling took the form of small bets up to £100 at a time on the internet. It took place over two years prior to her being found out; that’s where the money went.
“The money was taken from the Post Office account and put into her account and she gambled it. She just felt totally out of control.
“She accepts a significant amount of money was taken from the Post Office to fund that gambling habit. It wasn’t a sophisticated, pre-planned fraud. She was out of her depth.
“She wasn’t funding an extravagant lifestyle. She didn’t have holidays. She lived in fear of being found out and it was inevitable she would be found out.”
Oswald had been taking money to fund her online gambling debts for five years before she was finally caught and arrested. An investigation then uncovered thousands more had gone missing. She collapsed when fraud investigators quizzed her.
She was found to have also ripped off an environmental charity in the housing estate where she had been a well-known and trusted pillar of the community.
Oswald, 53, Grange Terrace, Perth, admitted embezzling £100,000 from Letham Post Office while she was in a position of trust as manager between January 1 2008 and December 6 2012.
She further admitted embezzling £2,367.36 from the city’s Letham Climate Challenge, based on Garth Avenue, while she was in a position of trust as a trustee of the charity.
She had been asked to set up a bank account for the charity but it emerged she had not done so and had simply kept the tax payments she was due to make on its sole employee’s behalf.
Oswald also admitted stealing £8,059.80 belonging to Jean Johnson at her own address and a house on Harley Place, Perth, between October 7 2010 and December 3 2012.
The court was told Mrs Johnson had owned the sub-post office and had trusted her friend and colleague Oswald to take over when she became too frail to run the business. Oswald, who worked in the branch since the 1980s, helped herself to thousands from Mrs Johnson’s personal bank account.
Oswald was handpicked by the local residents’ association when it formed the Letham Climate Challenge charity, to help set it up as a registered charity pursuing green initiatives.
Sheriff Lindsay Foulis said: “All these charges which covered five years displayed a very significant and clear breach of trust. The problem with people who embezzle is that they don’t think of anyone but themselves.”