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A ROYAL Mail cleaner caught stealing mail containing gift cards has avoided being sent to prison.
Susan James, 62, was caught out stashing mail on a sorting tray inside her cleaning room at the Mail’s Flint delivery offices.
She had come under scrutiny after an anniversary card with a £20 gift voucher posted by a woman from Flint to her parents in Anglesey in September last year failed to arrive.
When the woman went to Asda in Flint to cancel the gift card, she found it had been spent with CCTV footage showing James using it to buy tea bags and cigarettes.
The Royal Mail launched an investigation at the delivery office where James had been told not to handle mail items, but persisted in taking miss-sort mail from a frame.
North East Wales Magistrates’ Court heard two test letters, which “were very obviously greetings cards” were placed on the frame and were found along with 52 other items of mail in the cleaning room.
District Judge Gwyn Jones told James her type of offending had a “knock-on effect” and threatened the good name of the Royal Mail.
Suspending her one-year sentence for a year and ordering her to complete 240 hours of unpaid work, the judge said: “To put it bluntly you had items in your cleaning room which suggest a high degree of planning.”
Andrea Fitzgerald, prosecuting for the Royal Mail, told the court when the test items went missing the trail led to James’ cleaning room
James emerged with the mail tray covered with black bin bags.
Underneath 52 greetings card items were found along with the two test items.
James claimed she did not know how they got there.
A leaving card bound for a former employee of the delivery office was also discovered and it emerged that James had pocketed £50 from a whip round and a donation.
James, who had worked as a cleaner for the Royal Mail for 13 years, denied stealing the Asda gift card and said she had found the it in the vehicle compound.
James, of Dee Cottages, Flint pleaded not guilty to three charges of theft. She also denied stealing £50 cash belonging to Craig Robbins.
But she was found guilty of all four counts at a trial last Thursday.
She had admitted committing fraud by dishonestly using the £20 gift card at Asda on September 29 last year.
Bethan Jones, defending, said financial pressures were to blame.
James must pay compensation of £70 to the Royal Mail and a victim surcharge of £115 as well as a £1,000 contribution to the £5,376 costs.
