A SHOPWORKER who stole hundreds of pounds of lottery cash after discovering how to identify winning scratch cards was jailed for four months on Thursday.

John Mazur was told by magistrates in Darlington that he had cheated the public, threatened the reputation of the National Lottery and breached his employers' trust with the scam.

The 22-year-old began checking rolls of scratch cards while working as assistant manager at Bells Store in Corporation Road, Darlington, earlier this year.

Prosecutor Simon Crowder told South Durham Magistrates' Court that Mazur, who pleaded guilty to theft, could identify winning tickets and would then claim the cash.

He said Mazur had stolen between £400 and £1,200 over a three-month period.

Managers began to suspect something was amiss when financial discrepancies were discovered.

Mazur, who was in line for promotion, was caught after he was filmed, unbeknown to him, on one of the store's CCTV cameras.

Mr Crowder said people buying scratch cards at the store at the time of the offences could only have bought losing tickets.

"It's an offence that not only undermines the lottery system in itself but members of the public who come in to buy scratch cards," he said.

The court heard Mazur, of Oakfield, Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, had gambling problems but had never been in court before. He received a police caution for shoplifting in October 1998.

Chris Bunting, mitigating, said there were "underlying problems" which led to him stealing the cash.

"He fully appreciates that there are lots of losers in this case, not only himself."

Sentencing Mazur, Ruth Dent, the magistrates' bench chairman, told him there were no mitigating factors. "Members of the public have been cheated by winning cards being appropriated by you," she said.

Mazur was given a six-month jail term, reduced by two months for his early guilty plea.

A spokeswoman for Camelot, the National Lottery operator, said after the sentence: "Every scratch card game is tested by an independent laboratory to ensure they cannot be compromised and - as a result - fraud is highly unusual.

"However, we thoroughly investigate those very few cases of attempted fraud that are reported to us."