Post Office cashier, Modupe Sunmonu, jailed after 10 years on the run

Published: 15 April 2010
by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS

A FORMER post office worker who went on the run for 10 years after she was caught stealing thousands of pounds from her branch has finally been sent to prison.

Modupe Sunmonu, 46, pleaded guilty to stealing more than £35,000 over a 12-month period between 1998 and 1999. She was jailed for two and a half years at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday.

Sunmonu, a mother of four, had worked as a cashier at the Kentish Town post office branch for more than a decade when she began to steal by authorising fraudulent payment slips for herself. 

It went unnoticed until a random check at the Post Office’s auditing office in Northern Ireland exposed her scam. Staff had been looking for paperwork from a different branch when they accidentally pulled out the Kentish Town file.

Sunmonu, from Kingsbury in north-west London, was immediately suspended, but fled before she could be tried, first moving to America and later Nigeria. She was only caught for a second time last December when she was pulled over on the A12 for a faulty light on her car.

Her family face further anguish after Judge Murray Shanks ordered investigators pore over their finances in the hope of recouping the money.

Defending Sunmonu, Stephen Fidler said she was needed at home to care for her four children, aged between 10 and 19, but Judge Shanks rejected the pleas. 

Sentencing Sunmonu, Judge Shanks said: “You were a cashier in a post office and in that post you had a degree of trust put in you, but what you did was to steal that ­money. 

“You were caught by chance – I infer it would have gone on.

“You ran away, apparently in fear. You managed to stay away from the authorities for 10 years, and for most of that period you were away in the United States and in Nigeria, but you came back and probably thought it had all gone away.”