A FRAUDSTER who admitted stealing £400,000 to fund a £1.2million gambling habit has been jailed.

Kathleen Weir, 40, of Edwina Close admitted embezzling the cash from the family business she worked for.

Southampton Crown Court heard today how the management accountant – who also used the surname Griffin - used nine different bank accounts in her own name to stash stolen cash – and hid transactions from her employers over a period of seven years.

But when her employers, Southampton based builders’ merchants  Elliots started an investigation in 2016 into the missing cash, she refused to comment.

Weir, who had worked for the company since 2009, instead blamed others for the lost funds.

Mitigating, Sarah Jones said Weir had suffered from depression as a result of her father’s death and would benefit from treatment for PTSD – but that it was difficult to explain how Weir got herself into “such a mess.”

Investigator Stephen Webber said: “Kathleen Weir was a senior member of staff at Elliott Brothers.

"She was employed by them for seven years but she exploited the company’s trust in her by systematically draining company funds to feed her gambling habit.

“The amounts involved were staggering and this was happening over a very long period of time.

"Both these factors demonstrate the severity of Weir’s gambling addiction. The fact that she has nothing to show for it at the end of the day tells its own story.

“But it wasn’t her money she was gambling with. Her actions were to the detriment of the company which placed its trust in her and to everyone who worked with her.

"She has abused that trust appallingly and the sentence today reflects that.”

Tom Elliott, Managing Director of Elliotts added: "We were deeply saddened when the fraudulent activity came to light and have been assisting the police with their investigation ever since.”

Weir pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud and was sentenced to five years imprisonment.