A THIEVING postal worker who was caught red-handed after she stole a planted parcel with an electronic tracking device and cash has been given a suspended prison sentence.
Stacey Bellas was arrested in a sting set up by Royal Mail investigators, called in after a parcel with cash went missing from the a secure area of Spennymoor Delivery Office while she was standing in briefly for a supervisor.
Andrea Fitzgerald, prosecuting for Royal Mail, said the 31-year-old delivery officer had returned from sick leave following an accident to be placed on light duty, last September.
Part of her duty was to cover the customer callers’ office while the officer in charge was on his meal breaks.
A packet containing packet containing 1,000 euros went missing from a special deliver locker while he went out for ten minutes, on October 8.
A Royal Mail investigator later went to the office posing as a customer.
He handed Bellas a packet containing 100 dollars and an electronic tracking device and asked that the item be returned to the sender as the named recipient did not live at the address given.
Another member of staff took the package and placed it on a trolley and told Bellas to inform her line manager when he returned.
Ms Fitzgerald said: “The defendant did not do this and when she left the office to go home the tracker confirmed the item was moving.
“When she was confronted at her car she agreed to searches of her bag, home and car.”
The test item recovered from her bag had a small hole in it, with its contents visible.
A search of Bellas’ wheelie bin at her home uncovered four letters addressed to other people.
When interviewed she admitted theft of the planted special delivery package and conceded that she should not have brought the other letters home.
Robin Ford, mitigating, said Bellas, was of previous good character and was remorseful about what she had done.
He said Bellas accepted “reluctantly” that it had to be her that took the packet with the euros, but could not explain what had happened and why.
He added, Bellas had come into work three days earlier having been hit over the head with an iron by a former partner.
The letters found at her home she had forgotten to deliver and not returned them to work.
Mr Ford added she had “horrific experiences” over the previous several years. These included the suicide of a fiancé, the tragic death of her brother and the death of the grandmother who brought her up.
Bellas of Lightfoot Road, Newton Aycliffe, pleaded guilty to theft of four postal packages in July 2016 and of the planted package. She asked the theft of the euros to be taken into consideration.
Bench chairman Mark O’Neill sentenced her to 20 weeks in jail suspended for 18 months and ordered her to pay £840 compensation.