Jail for man who stole £700,000

A LITTLE Chef supervisor who helped himself to £700,000 from his employers to pay off gambling debts has been jailed for 27 months.

Yiuman Poon, of Seafield Road, had pleaded guilty at Edinburgh Sheriff Court previously to using a credit card payment machine at the company’s Dreghorn Link branch to transfer £458,000 to one account controlled by him and £242,000 to another.

Poon, 48, telephoned staff on the morning of November 13 last year telling them not to come into work as an electrical fault had occurred in the restaurant. However, he forgot to tell a colleague on the afternoon shift. When the worker arrived, they found the place deserted and a refund receipt for £458,000 lying on the floor.

The police were contacted and they found that the two sums of money had been transferred to accounts to which Poon had access. When officers went to Poon’s top-floor flat the following morning to arrest him, he escaped by jumping out a window, shinning down a drainpipe, jumping into a tree and running off.

Sheriff Alistair Noble told Poon he would have been jailed for three years had he not been a first offender who co-
operated with the police.