A WOMAN who covered up thefts from the Co-op store where she was a supervisor by putting through bogus refund dockets has escaped a prison sentence.

Instead, a judge at Warwick Crown Court ordered June Gardiner, 34, of Foster Avenue, Studley, to do 150 hours community punishment work after she admitted 13 charges of false accounting.

Simon Ward, prosecuting, said that in 1999 Gardiner was the cash office supervisor at the Co-op store in Studley and had responsibility for counting the takings and banking the money.

She also dealt with any refunds and over a period of several months the number of refunds became suspiciously high, and she was challenged about it.

She admitted she had been falsifying refund dockets, and Mr Ward pointed out that the 13 charges were specimen offences reflecting about 140 bogus dockets for amounts which totalled £10,372.

Police were called in and when Gardiner was arrested and questioned in December 1999, she said she had noticed a discrepancy in the takings and knew she should have reported it, but was frightened she would get the blame.

So she decided to ''put it right'' herself by making out the fraudulent refund dockets.

Mr Ward said that Gardiner admitted covering up losses of about £12,000 between January and September.

Matthew Barnes, defending, pointed out that at an earlier hearing it had been accepted Gardiner, who had no previous convictions, had not stolen the money herself.

"She panicked and altered accounts when she thought suspicion would fall on her."

Sentencing Gardiner and ordering her to pay £550 costs, Judge Marten Coates told her: "What you did was serious because you were helping someone to steal money from the people who were giving you work.

"I have to deal with you on the basis that you were not the person who was stealing the money. It seems an unlikely story, but that is the basis on which the prosecution now puts the case."