FAMILY and friends of a woman who swindled almost $70,000 from her former employer to fuel her gambling habit sobbed as they watched her being led away to serve six months in jail.

Magistrate Trevor Black told the court he took "no pleasure" in handing down Linda Josephine Baillie’s sentence, after accepting she had shown remorse for her crime.

Baillie, 55, pleaded guilty in Cairns Magistrates’ Court to one count of fraud.

The court heard she misappropriated $68,072 from Denis Duncombe Locksmiths over 25 months, almost the entire time she worked there.

Her crime was only discovered when she went on holidays in May 2006 and another bookkeeper found discrepancies in the internet banking
transactions.

Baillie’s barrister Jim Henry SC said his client could not explain why she took the money, except she thought she needed it to pay bills – because she was putting the rest of her money through poker machines.

"I must be going crazy or something," Mr Henry read from a statement the defendant gave to police.

"I’ve worked a long time in all sorts of positions of trust and I’ve never done anything like this."

Mr Henry said Baillie was suffering a depressive illness at the time of the offence and had lost several family members to cancer.

Mr Black said he accepted the offending behaviour was out of character and Baillie had paid back about half of the stolen money.

He sentenced her to three years’ jail, suspended after serving six months, and ordered the rest of the money be repaid after she was released from prison.

Outside the court, business owner Denis Duncombe said he was relieved the case was finally over.

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