TRUSTED employee Gary Smith has been ordered to pay £1,141 compensation after stealing cash from car park machines while working as a parking attendant.
Smith, 32, of Highgate, Cleethorpes, admitted a series of offences of theft and attempted theft between August 14 and September 5 last year.
At an earlier hearing, Grimsby Crown Court was told that Smith was working at the time for Balfour Beatty as a civil enforcement officer (parking warden).
Smith and another defendant, Mark Fox, were involved in thefts in which a key was used to open cash boxes and steal money from pay and display car park ticket machines.
The machines targeted were at Thrunscoe car park, Cleethorpes, and others at Somerfield, Wellington Street, in Grimsby and at the boating lake in Cleethorpes.
Individual sums taken included £334 and £141 but, on a couple of occasions, there was no money in the machines that could be taken.
Smith's responsibilities while working included issuing parking fines, the court heard.
The sum of £579 was found in Smith's car when it was stopped by the police in August last year – leaving £1,141 still missing.
Sentence had been deferred in May for six months.
At a resumed hearing before Hull Crown Court, Smith was given a nine-month suspended prison sentence, 130 hours' unpaid work and was ordered to pay £600 costs.
Richard Butters, mitigating, told the earlier hearing that Smith's work as a civil enforcement officer at the time did not include taking cash from parking machines and it was Fox who had the key.
"He was just a complete idiot," said Mr Butters.
"He was doing it to make ends meet.
"He was short of money."
