Thieving postie’s prison plea cuts no ice

A postman driven to steal money from letters he should have delivered in Oldham failed to win time off his jail term on appeal yesterday.

Judge, Mrs Justice Rafferty, said the general public should have “unassailable confidence” in the Royal Mail — something that could only be achieved by employees having “100 per cent integrity”.

Giving her judgement on Andrew John Worrall’s case at London’s Appeal Court she said that although she had the “greatest of sympathy” with him and the “inevitable shame” it had brought upon the 41-year-old and his family — his two-year sentence was justified.
Worrall, of Newark Road, Rochdale, admitted two counts of theft and one of false accounting and was handed the jail term at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court in May this year.

The court heard that he had delivered post in the Oldham area for six years but that, following divorce from his wife in April, 2006, he had fallen into financial difficulties.

He was eventually caught out when a colleague spotted him hiding two greetings cards in his sorting frame, and bosses searched his car.

It was there that they found around 1,500 items of post which had not been delivered, and a further search of his house revealed another hundred or so items.

He later admitted that he had been taking around £20-a-day from letters for two months.