No jail for grandmother who stole, gambled $200K

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An Auckland grandmother who gambled away nearly $200,000 she stole from her employer will not go to jail.

Lorena Marie Bailey, 58, will spend the next year on home detention - the harshest sentence before imprisonment - after admitting 10 months of offending from April last year while she worked at Epicurean Dairy Ltd.

"She developed a severe gambling problem at the start of 2013 and it was of such a nature that it overtook every aspect of her life and simply was something she couldn't control," her lawyer Petrina Stokes said.

The court heard how Bailey had been disowned by her family, lost custody of her granddaughter and had "virtually nothing to show for her working life".

The defendant admitted accessing the computer system used by the company on 21 occasions, netting her $188,694.

Judge Grant Fraser said she had a "full-blown gambling addiction" and ordered her to repay $10,000 of the stolen cash.

Half of the money will come from Bailey's Kiwisaver account and the other half will be paid back over the next five years.

Despite avoiding a jail term, the judge said he expected the sentence to be difficult.
"It's a significant sentence that will test you to the absolute limit," he said.