A Post Office manager embezzled more than £100,000 from her employer and a local charity to fund her online gambling habit.
Carol Oswald faces being sent to prison after she admitted embezzling a six-figure sum of cash and stealing more than £8,000 from an elderly woman.
Oswald had been taking money to fund her online gambling debts for five years before she was finally caught and arrested. An investigation then uncovered thousands more had gone missing.
She had been found to have also ripped off an environmental charity in the local housing estate where she had been a well-known and trusted pillar of the community.
But at Perth Sheriff Court on Tuesday, Oswald was warned she faces being jailed after she admitted helping herself to more than £110,000.
Oswald, 53, Grange Terrace, Perth, admitted embezzling £100,000 from Letham Post Office while she was in a position of trust as manager between January 1 2008 and December 6 2012.
She further admitted embezzling £2,367.36 from the city’s Garth Avenue-based Letham Climate Challenge while she was a trustee of the charity.
Oswald also admitted stealing £8,059.80 belonging to 81-year-old Jean Johnson at her own address and a house on Harley Place, Perth, between October 7 2010 and December 3 2012.
Sheriff William Wood deferred sentence on Oswald for Criminal Justice Social Work reports but warned her that all of his sentencing options would remain open including imprisonment.
Oswald had been well respected as the long-term manageress of the post office branch serving the community of Letham in Perth.
But she had been lured into opening online gaming accounts and had quickly racked up significant losses playing bingo and other casino-style games on her computer.
A source close to the case said: “Records show she was generally playing with what most people would consider to be relatively small stakes each time.
“But the problem was she was betting, and losing, so regularly, as people often do, that the debts began to mount up and she was unable to cover them with her own money.
“By 2008 it had obviously become so bad that she had to turn to embezzling money from the post office where she worked and was considered a pillar of the community.”
Oswald was simply moving money from Post Office accounts into an account in her own name, but as she chased her losses the debts continued to build up.
Despite being secretly deep in debt, she agreed to take up a position as a trustee of the Letham Climate Challenge eco-charity because she was so highly thought of in the area.
The charity, which set up a shop to recycle unwanted items to needy locals, turned to Oswald to help but she quickly began embezzling money from the organisation.
The source said: “Carol Oswald has let down so many hard-working volunteers and the local community as a whole.
“She might not have been living an extravagant lifestyle, but she was spending other people’s money to fund her own gambling.
“A lot of people around here are extremely angry about what she did and feel totally let down by someone they had trusted to be honest.”