Asfordby Valley man jailed for stealing £250,000 to fund gambling habit

Former Dunelm employee, Thomas Eaton, spontaneously confessed to his bosses after he ‘hit rock bottom’ following his decision to gamble money set aside for his family’s weekly food shop, Leicester Crown Court was told.

The court heard the 34-year-old admitted forging an account book, submitting bogus expense claims worth £112,323 and fraudulently obtaining three company credit cards in order to steal cash.

Prosecutor Tony Stanford said Dunelm had spent around £100,000 investigating the fraud.

Eaton, of North View Close, previously admitted five counts of fraud and one count of false accounting and he was jailed on Friday for 27 months.

Despite Recorder Adrian Reynolds describing the behaviour of some gambling companies as ‘revolting’, he told Eaton: “The sad thing is we had to wait four years for you to see the light and do the decent thing.”

The recorder said he had seen a BBC Panorama programme on gambling last year and could ‘still remember vividly scenes where people who were obviously struggling were being harassed by gambling companies’.

He continued: “Mr Eaton, as revolted as I am by all of that, as I’m sure the vast majority of the country would be revolted by it, this is about what you have done not what they have done.

“This fraudulent activity was conducted over a sustained period of time – and it was a really sustained period of time.

“I’m afraid there is still a price to pay.”

Eaton’s defence barrister Nichola Cafferkey said the defendant was ‘in the grip of a very severe gambling addiction’.

But Ms Cafferkey added: “While I acknowledge that the money was being wasted, it wasn’t being used for fancy shopping trips or holidays and the like.”

She said gambling addiction ‘can be likened to an illness’ and that Eaton had ‘lost all sense of judgment’.