A West Australian man has been sentenced to a year in prison after admitting to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Australia Post.Creagh will spend at least 12 months behind bars after he was sentenced to three years in prison with two years suspended.A man who stole more than $450,000 from Australia Post to pay off gambling debts while running a tiny Western Australian town's post office will serve prison time.
The 32-year-old faced the Albany District Court on Tuesday and was handed a three-year jail term with two years suspended. Creagh had been working for his father's general store in Ongerup which the post office was part of, since 2014.Defence counsel Sonia Anderson said Creagh took the money as he was struggling to pay off a large gambling debt of $7,000, multiple personal loans and a mortgage.
While Creagh did take $452,850, he transferred $131,350 back to Australia Post before he was caught, leaving a total of $321,500 taken.Ms Anderson said his aim was not to take money to simply gamble with it, but to get himself out of his predicament.District Court Judge John Staude agreed the offending appeared to be driven by poor decision-making in a desperate situation.