Stourbridge post office worker guilty of £3k fiddle

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A STOURBRIDGE post office worker and her husband tried to fiddle nearly £3,000 by making false compensation claims.

Wolverhampton magistrates heard Baljit Nijjar, who worked at the branch on the town's High Street, had access to the documentation needed to make a claim for lost post.

The couple maintained a package containing a £2,450 diamond ring and another with £500 cash had not reached their destinations when in fact they had never been posted.

John Dove, prosecuting, said Nijjar, aged 36, and her 36-year-old husband Parvinder, who had also once worked at the same branch, falsely filled in the necessary forms to try and claim money back from Royal Mail.

Mr Dove said the claims were clearly an "attempted scam" made within just minutes of each other.

He added Baljit Nijjar filled two packets with screwed up paper and gave them to her sister-in-law who also worked at the post office to process.

The sister-in-law, believing them to be genuine, put them into the system but afterwards Baljit Nijjar removed the parcels from the post bag and they were never sent.

The crooked husband and wife, of Marshall Road, Willenhall, both admitted two charges of fraud and they were each given a six week jail term suspended for a year.

They were further ordered to each pay £1,155 compensation by the court and to carry out 150 hours unpaid work in the community.

Defence barrister Timothy Gascoyne said the couple had financial problems and they were now insolvent. He described the fraud as "badly conceived" and stressed their criminality was always going to be discovered.