Postie who stole £100k ordered to pay it back
A POSTMISTRESS who spent more than five years embezzling cash from her branch and a community charity is being chased for £100,000 by the Crown.
Carol Oswald is serving a 40month jail sentence and had initially been told she would be pursued f or £ 50,000 under Proceeds of Crime legislation.
But Oswald, 53, returned to Perth Sheriff Court yesterday to be informed that prosecutors had doubled the amount they are seeking to claw back from her.
Oswald was jailed last May after she admitted stealing and embezzling more than £110,000, which she frittered away on funding an online gambling problem.
She claimed she had been try-
‘Trusted to run the Post Office’
ing to win back the money to pay for the losses on the business.
As well as embezzling money from her work and a community environmental charity, Oswald also stole more than £8,000 from Jean Johnson, 81, who trusted her to run the Post Office.
Mrs Johnson owned the Post Office business and was left liable for the £100,000 her successor and friend had embezzled from the branch when she became too frail to run it.
Oswald was also found to have ripped off £2,367.36 from a charity set up on a housing estate where she was well known and acted as a trustee.
The case will return to court later this month.