A TRUSTED postmaster has been jailed for stealing more than £40,000 of benefits from needy and vulnerable people.

Grant Wallace, 36, was sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court to two years in prison after admitting 19 counts of theft and 31 counts of using a false instrument. The amount stolen came to £46,457.

Christopher Knox, prosecuting, told the court how Wallace, then postmaster at the post office in Quarry Lane, South Shields, South Tyneside, made 472 claims from the Department of Work and Pensions using benefit books belonging to other people.

The benefit books came into Wallace's possession mainly when they had been accidentally left on his post office counter or lost elsewhere and handed in by trusting members of the public.

The benefit books were swiped over a barcode scanner which would send information to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).

It would send the appropriate payment to the post office in the form of a voucher to be cashed by the beneficiary.

However, instead of passing these vouchers on, Wallace cashed them for himself.

Officers from the DWP made a surprise raid on the post office on October 28, last year. At a later raid at Wallace's house in Mortimer Road, South Shields, officers recovered £63,000.

Gavin Doig, defending, said: "He is deeply sorrowful of his behaviour."

Wallace was also jailed for six months for trying to obtaining a passport by deception.