A football club treasurer who spent £350 on drink and gambling every week for 14 years has handed himself into Police in Wales.

James Eric Jones, 58, a retired assistant bank manager voluntarily gave him self up to Police when the savings of Aberaeron FC in Ceredigion had all gone.

He admitted stealing £25,000 over a 14 year period and 14 offences of false accounting at Swansea Crown Court.
He was jailed for 12 months, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to carry out 250 hours of community work.

The court heard in addition to taking the money from the club, Jones from Ffosyffin near Aberaeron also took out bank loans to finance £350 a week on drinking and gambling.

When the savings accounts were exhausted he walked into Aberystwyth police station and confessed.

Prosecutor Clare Templeton said Jones began stealing almost as soon as he was appointed club treasurer in 1992.

The club had two savings accounts from which money was transferred into a current account from where bills were settled.
Jones stopped paying cash into the savings accounts and gradually they were reduced to zero balances.

Miss Templeton said Jones presented false accounts to the club committee and completely invented a firm of auditors to make it look as though the books had been independently verified.

The court herd on 4 June, 2007 he disappeared and in the early hours of the following morning his partner received a text message saying, 'I am on the way to the clink'.

He told police: 'I have been fiddling the books for years and I can't live with it any more. I want to confess.'
Jones' barrister, Paul Hobson, said it was accepted Jones was on the verge of being found out but he had confessed and had entered guilty pleas.

He added Jones still owed £16,000 to the banks.

'One can well understand the reaction, in a small community, to what he has done. He has gone from being a popular and quite well known figure to where he is ostracised by many people,' Mr Hobson said.

Fortunately, he added, Aberaeron FC had been able to survive thanks to the efforts of its members and committee.

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