AN ACCOUNTANT who stole more than £100,000 from the North Yorkshire building society where he was a director has been jailed for 18 months.

Gerald Roper Waterworth, 50, of Hall Park Grove, Scalby, Scarborough, had taken the money to buy treats and holidays for his family and pay huge debts, York Crown Court heard.

Geoff Hunter, prosecuting, said Waterworth had taken £98,806 over a four-and-a-half-year period from January 1997 to October 2001 from the Scarborough branch of the Citizen's Advice Bureau where he worked voluntarily as treasurer.

Then, when the charity started to notice flaws in its accounts, he stole £110,443.93 from Scarborough Building Society, where he was financial director between November 1999 and February 2002, to replace the missing funds. He also forged signatures and kept false accounts to cover up his crimes, he said.

Mr Hunter said the defendant had confessed everything to the building society's chief executive, John Carrier.

Tom Bayliss, defending, said Waterworth, who had a £92,000 salary and a company car, had taken the money to treat his wife who had never really settled in Scarborough.

He said: "When he realised things were coming to light he said he had considered suicide."

Waterworth was saddled with heavy debts after he moved to the seaside town from the Midlands in 1993.

He said: "This isn't stealing to fund high living. This is stealing he was driven to because of the appalling financial state he had permitted himself to get into by borrowing to fund borrowing."

He said Waterworth had overpaid the Citizen's Advice Bureau by more than £10,000 because he had no idea how much he had stolen and was just eager to repay the charity.

He said: "The Citizen's Advice Bureau didn't lose out, but sadly the Scarborough Building Society did. It was a great breach of trust."

Mr Bayliss said the effect of Waterworth's offences on his family had been "catastrophic".

As he passed sentence the honorary recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, said: "This was a long-standing fraud committed by a man who was highly placed in both organisations."

Waterworth, who had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing at Scarborough Magistrates Court to 15 counts of obtaining property by deception, two counts of making false instruments, three counts of using false instruments and two charges of false accounting, was told by the judge: "It is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. You reported the offences to Scarborough Building Society when matters got too hot to handle."

Waterworth was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment and banned from being a company director for five years.

Updated: 10:37 Saturday, January 04, 2003