Stealing for Online Bingo

When Sandra Preston, 42, walks out of jail in four to six months time, depending on her behavior, there will be quite a few people eager to talk to her.

Among them will be her online bingo buddies, her boss from the Total petrol station in Driffield, England, who she stole from, the security people from Paypoint, the money transfer system she used to transfer £62,000 into her online Bingo accounts and perhaps a few family members.

The operators of the Mecca Bingo and Foxy Bingo websites may be there as well, to implore her to come back to the bingo games. A regular loser, she was a valued customer.

Preston has jailed for six months at the Hull Crown Court, after admitting the fraud at a previous hearing. She had told the court how she started gambling after her marriage failed. She had moved in with a friend whose mother was an online bingo aficionado. Preston too began playing bingo online and her debts soon spiraled out of control.

The court was told how Preston started off by paying for her bingo activities herself, but lost heavily and got into debt. She then switched to using her credit cards.

Finally, deep in money-trouble, she used PayPoint, a money transfer system to transfer money from the garage where she worked to online bingo websites. As she gambled her account would either be debited or credited with funds as she won or lost.

Her plot fell apart when the garage owner sold the business and discovered the missing sums as he prepared the company accounts for the prospective buyer.