A British accountant who stole £70,000 from two churches he worked for to fund his gambling addiction has been jailed for 16 months.
Derek Klein, 53, from Ridington, UK, transferred money from the bank accounts of two local parochial church councils over 23 years while he worked as its treasurer. He admitted to stealing £57,000 from 15th century St Andrew's Church at Bacton and £13,000 from St Peter's church at Ridlington over 14 years from 1993.
After the priest in charge of the two churches, rev Richard Hines began to suspect money was missing, an investigation showed that he had spent £350,000 on gambling over recent years and only won back about ten percent of the money spent.
At first Klein claimed he had put money in a high interest account in Jersey after church officials gave him permission to invest the cash as he determined. Klein lost most of the money playing in an online gambling site where he called himself The Bishop as an on-line nickname.
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