Royal Mail worker stole GBP13,000 from letters and packages to fund GBP300-a-week gambling habit

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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A former postal worker has forfeited his pension after he admitted stealing £13,000 from the Royal Mail to fund his gambling habit.

Rajendra Rana, 41, from Hounslow, confessed to stealing the cash from letters and packages after he was caught with around £2,500 in foreign currency in his socks.


Colleagues at the Jubilee Mail Centre in Feltham, where Rana worked as a porter, had raised concerns with management in November 2017 after seeing him in the room handling special delivery packages, which Rana was not supposed to enter.

When challenged, he produced €2,500 (around £2,150) from one sock and 21,600 Mauritian rupees (around £500) from his other sock.

During a sentencing hearing at Guildford Crown Court on Friday (January 25), Judge Peter Moss heard Rana, who is married with three children, subsequently told investigators he had been stealing cash since January 2017 after developing a £300-a-week gambling addiction.

Laurence Imrie, defending, said Rana's actions had shown "genuine remorse" and had agreed to surrender to entirety of his £14,563 pension pot to cover compensation and court costs.

"He is entirely shameful," Mr Imrie said, adding that he would also lose his second job as a cleaner at Heathrow Airport as a result of his conviction.

Passing sentence, Judge Moss said he would have sent Rana to prison but for his full confession and offer to surrender his pension.

He said: "You are rightly ashamed of your conduct. The Royal Mail is a sacrosanct body that holds a very important position in society.


"You have a gambling addiction and you are obviously not good at it. You are putting your family at risk, your home at risk and your children at risk.

"You have got to sort out your gambling addiction. Every time you go near a gambling machine or a betting office, think of your wife and children."

In addition to forfeiting his pension, Rana received an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for one year, and must complete 100 hours of unpaid work.

[Navalron]

That means that RM have paid more than half of the cost of the thefts. That's it you look at their contributions into his pension fund. He should have been heavily fined also. Hardly anyone who gets caught stealing in the job gets jail time now, unlike in the past, when pretty much you were guaranteed to get a sentence for stealing from RM. Standards everywhere have went down, in my humble opinion.