Bingo: Bingo cashier jailed

Emma Meechan, 28 of Lennox Gardens in Banbury, took advantage of a computer glitch to pocket £16,178 over 13 months as a cashier at Gala Bingo, off Castle Street in Banbury, Oxford Crown Court heard on Monday.

The bingo hall uses a swipe card system called Buzzcard which allows customers to load money onto a credit card-like device and store their bingo winnings.

Meechan took the money between July 2006 and August 2007 after discovering some of the cards had mistakenly been loaded with £167,000 because of a computer error.

Meechan's then manager at the bingo hall, Colin Ricalton, had also stolen £23,000 and had been sentenced at an earlier hearing, the court heard. An anomymous tip-off led to the thefts being found out.

"It was a computer glitch which the employee took advantage of, not something she engineered."

Jane Malcolm, defending, said the crime was "not a sophisticated one" and Meechan had used the money only to supplement her income of about £140 per week, not to live an extravagant lifestyle.

She said: "She realises she abused a position of trust and she knows that whatever happens here today was caused by her own greed.

"But she was miserable in the offence and is deeply ashamed and sorry about what she has done."

Tearful in the dock, Meechan was sentenced to eight months in prison by Recorder Harold Persaud and will serve half that term.

Ricalton, 54 and from Cirencester, was given 14 months in jail on one count of theft at an Oxford Crown Court hearing on March 31.

www.banburyguardian.co.uk