A former building society cashier who stole more than £17,000 from customers' accounts has been jailed for nine months.

Julie Dunn, 25, forged signatures and set up new accounts to steal the cash while she was working at the North Street branch of the Brit-annia building society in Keighley.

Prosecutor Andrew Stubbs said Dunn, a married woman with a young son, bled one account dry. then, after being promoted by the building society, she stole more money from another customer in her last few days at the branch.

Dunn, of Weston Street, Exley Head, was suspended in November 1995 after an investigation was launched into the missing money. After a two-week trial at Bradford Crown Court last month she was found guilty of 23 theft offences.

Jailing her on Monday, Judge John Walford told Dunn that the offences represented a grave breach of trust. "There has to be a custodial sentence for offences such as these," he told her. "There has to be such a sentence to deter you and others like you who might be tempted to commit these offences.

"This will be your first custodial sentence and all the harder, particularly for someone like you suffering - sadly, but inevitably in the circumstances - from clinical depression."

Dunn's barrister Neil Davey said although there was a degree of persistence in the offences they were not sophisticated or professional.

"They were bound to be discovered and her participation was bound to be discovered," he said. "The actual mechanism involved in committing these offences was clumsy in the extreme."

Mr Davey said there were mistakes made which would have pointed the finger at Dunn but they slipped through the net at the time.

Mr Stubbs said the three customers who had lost money had been reimbursed by the building society and were paid compensation where it was thought necessary. He revealed that one of them, a woman who was too ill to attend the trial, had since died.

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