Bingo Addicted Governor Stole Cash form School!
Tuesday, 11 December 2012 | Written by Tami Bayliss
Fans of Wiki Bingo will have most certainly read all about the past reports of how a bingo addiction can consume a person so entirely that they have to steal to get their next fix, and the latest reports of a bingo addict has come as a shock to the town of Swarcliffe in Leeds as it turns out that a School Governor nabbed over £30K to feed her addiction of both online bingo and offline bingo. We all know how addictive it can get – the thrill of an instant win cannot be easily trumped – and there are always a lot of reports of bingo fans stealing from their work or getting into debt because they can’t seem to stop themselves from playing, but the fact that a woman would steal from a SCHOOL makes this story that little bit harder to swallow.
Claire Mosby – a 38 year old mother of 3 – was working as a school governor and office administrator of a small primary school in Swarcliffe when she was found to have stolen that massive £30K from the safe. That cash had actually been collected from the parents of the parents at Swarcliffe Primary School and was supposed to have been spent on school dinners, field trips and school clubs held after school. Standing trial in Leeds Crown Court, the members of the jury heard how Claire managed to snag that £30K over a 3 month period! She was rumbled by the finance officer of the primary school who claimed that she had become increasingly worried over the low finances of the accounts of the school dinner money and clubs. It then transpired that the finance officer had been too scared to report this because she was worried that the school’s headmistress, Susan Sanderson, would be accused of stealing the cash. She stated: “I thought people would think it was me or if I reported it I was worried they would think I was accusing Susan Sanderson of taking it.”
Once found out, Claire Mosby admitted having spent at least £2k of it at online bingo site Mecca Bingo, spending the rest at her local Mecca Bingo hall and playing back the loans that she had accepted from loan sharks. She had taken these loans, she confessed, because she had racked up thousands of pounds worth of debts because of her online bingo addiction. It would appear that even getting caught out could not stop her insatiable love of online and offline bingo, as bank account records from Mosby showed that she had withdrawn a substantial amount of cash form an ATM right next door to a Mecca Bingo hall DURING the trial!
At the moment Mosby is out on bail and will be sentenced in January. He firmly stated that this was purely an act of leniency out of empathy for Mosby’s 3 small children who could have been left without their mother on Christmas day had she been sentenced at her trial just last week.
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