A woman who stole more than £33,000 of Lottery scratch cards from her employer has been spared jail.
Sheila Hancock, 60, was working as a shop assistant at Bytheway Stores in Thirsk, York Crown Court heard.
But she betrayed her boss Virajkumar Patel by stealing thousands of Camelot scratch cards worth £33,233 over a period of about 15 months.
Prosecutor Michael Cahill said Mr Patel had bought the convenience store in January 2020 and kept Hancock on as shop assistant after her ten-year stint doing the same job for the previous owner.
He carried out an extensive refurbishment of the shop on Sutton Road but soon found he wasn’t making any money.
“He wasn’t particularly concerned (about this at first),” said Mr Cahill.
However, by April this year the store still wasn’t turning over a profit.
The reason only became clear when the businessman looked at his CCTV footage which showed Hancock pinching scratch cards from the dispenser on “many” occasions.
The footage also showed her taking scratch-card winnings from the shop and selling cigarettes to a customer but not putting the sale through the till.
An accountant commissioned by Mr Patel found that the takings did not match the till transactions and that £33,233 of Lottery cards had been scanned at the store but not put through the till, “leaving Mr Patel with a liability to Camelot”.
Hancock, of Hambleton Place, Thirsk, was arrested and charged with theft. She admitted the offences, which occurred between January 2020 and April this year, and appeared for sentence on Wednesday knowing her liberty was at stake, not least because of a previous conviction for similar offences in 2008.
Mr Patel, a married father, said Hancock’s treachery had had a devastating effect on him and his family.
He said that when he set up the new business, he knew that Hancock had health problems and so he “wanted to make her life as easy as I could”.
He trusted her to work alone while he refitted the shop and even told her she was welcome to free hot drinks “because she was always cold”.
“She became part of the family,” added Mr Patel.
He said he didn’t think anything was suspicious about lack of profits at first and put it down to the Covid pandemic.
“When I discovered that she had been stealing from me, I just couldn’t believe it,” he said.
“I was absolutely devastated. I couldn’t believe that the woman I trusted (had stolen from me). I was so distressed I couldn’t sleep; I lost weight.”
Mr Patel was left with a £33,000 debt to Camelot due to Hancock’s systematic thieving and he was now having to work all hours to repay the money.
He said he now knew that Hancock had also been “stealing directly from the till” by not putting sales through for cigarettes.
The court heard that in 2008, Hancock was given a suspended prison sentence for theft and benefit fraud.
Ian West, mitigating, said Hancock was a scratch card gambling addict and she found it was “easy to simply take the scratch cards out of the rack”.
She was remorseful for “betraying the trust of Mr Patel” but was “in no position” to repay the owner.
Recorder Tahir Khan QC told Hancock: “A great deal of trust was placed in you to be honest and to run the shop on behalf of Mr Patel.
“He (treated you) like a family member. He himself had a young family. He invested heavily in the business and built it up.
“He’s (now) suffering emotionally, lost sleep and suffered from stress and finds himself in debt to Camelot to the tune of £33,000, and you are responsible for that state of affairs. You caused significant harm to a business that the owner was trying to build up.”
However, Mr Khan said he had noted Hancock’s mental and physical health issues and that she had been caring for her long-term partner. She had also shown “genuine remorse”.
“These features of mitigation persuade me that I can draw back from immediate custody,” said Mr Khan.
Hancock was given a two-year suspended jail sentence and ordered to carry out 140 hours’ unpaid work.
She was also ordered to complete a 20-day rehabilitation programme.
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