UK Gambling
The money sent to Sandeep Singh was meant to be paid into a Wolverhampton casino iStock

A shopkeeper who decided not to tell anyone after more than three quarters of a million pounds was accidentally transferred into his account has been jailed. Sandeep Singh, 34, was wrongly sent £766,098 (€857,484) over the course of two years after his bank details were mixed up with that of a casino in Wolverhampton.

The mistake was a result of Singh installing a cash machine outside his off-license after he was approached by DC Payments Ltd. The deal was Singh would be responsible for loading the machine with the necessary cash, which would later be reimbursed by the company.

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However, Singh's account was confused with that of Rubicon Casino, which has cash machines that are used more frequently and to withdraw greater sums of money.

The error meant the defendant was mistakenly refunded various amounts of money meant for the casino between October 2014 and October 2016.

With the money, Singh purchased a new home and transferred around £80,000 to India. Most of the money in Singh's account was frozen after DC Payments realised their error, but more than £260,000 had been taken out.

Martin Liddiard, mitigating, told Leicester Crown Court: "There's still nearly half a million pounds in his UK account which is under a restraining order.

"His home has also been restrained. In all, a good £600,000 will be recoverable." Liddiard added that "it doesn't look good" that Singh "tried once or twice" to phone to company to bring their mistake to attention before leaving it, reported the Leicester Mercury.

He has now been jailed for 12 months at Leicester Crown Court after pleading guilty to one count of theft.

Upon sentencing, judge Nicholas Dean said: "It's clear to me you've been a hardworking man and done the best by your family. But you've let yourself and them down."

He added: "You must have realised quite quickly payments were being made that ought not to have been.

"The efforts you made to contact them were desultory; it would be very simple to inform a company of this type of error.

"You succumbed to temptation, with you saying as little as possible about what was going on and nothing about the money that kept going into your account.

"You knew it would continue to be paid until the company realised the error and there didn't seem to be much chance of that happening quickly."