Wife saves lotto thief from jail
A store manager hit a lucky streak after nicking thousands of pounds worth of lottery scratchcards from his work.
Daniel Cassells activated the tickets on the store’s lottery terminal and went on to win substantial amounts of cash over the following six months.
He pocketed a massive £11,000 in winnings from the cards he stole from The Co-operative in Eliburn, Livingston, and the money was never recovered.
But Cassell’s luck ran out after he left the company and his bosses noticed a huge shortfall in the lottery accounts.
They found CCTV footage of him taking hundreds of scratchcards from the safe then discovered that the same batch numbers had been used to claim prizes in shops near his home in Carstairs, North Lanarkshire.
Cassells (29) was charged with stealing 65 packets of scratchcards with a retail value of £13,000 on repeated occasions between March 1 and August 13, 2014.
He eventually pled guilty and appeared for sentence at Livingston Sheriff Court on Friday.
The lucky thief’s good fortune returned when he narrowly avoided being sent to prison for the gross breach of trust, mainly thanks to a pleading letter to the sheriff from his wife.
Sheriff Peter Anderson sentenced him to an 18-month community payback order and ordered Cassells to pay compensation of £13,000 to his former employers at the rate of £60 a month.
At that rate it will take him more than 18 years to repay the money in full.
Prosecutor Alistair Macleod said that Cassells had quit his post as deputy manager at the chain’s Eliburn outlet after learning he was about to be dismissed over“performance issues”.
Following his resignation, Co-op managers found discrepancies in the lottery scratchcard trading account and discovered that thousands of pounds worth of cards were missing.
An investigation unearthed CCTV footage of the accused taking 65 packets of cards from the safe and activating them on the lottery terminal
Mr Macleod said:“Further investigation showed that cards from this batch had been used to claim winnings at shops near to the accused’s home address.”
Passing sentence, Sheriff Anderson told Cassells:“You now have to spend much of the rest of your life making up for what you have done.
“You’ve got a lot of making up to do to your wife. Have no doubt, it is her intervention that prevented you from going to jail today.”
The sheriff stressed that the community payback order was a direct alternative to a prison sentence.
He told Cassells:“There will be no other requirement such as unpaid work because you are already working long hours and you need to keep on doing that in order to support your family.”
As the accused fought back tears in the dock, the sheriff added:“No more foolishness, Mr Cassells.”