A salesman at a car dealership fiddled the books to cover up stealing money paid in to him by customers.
By the time auditors reviewed the accounts at the Peugeot dealers it appeared there was about £35,000 outstanding – all from salesman Ian Poole's customers.
Poole, of Leicester Road, Field Head, Markfield, pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to seven charges of false accounting on the basis that he had stolen "no more than £2,000" from his employers.
The 50-year-old was sentenced to eight months in prison suspended for 12 months and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.
Prosecutor Theresa Thorp said Poole worked as a used car salesman for Robins and Day, of Kenpas Highway, Coventry, for 12 years, until his offences were discovered in 2010.
Part of his job involved dealing with customers and taking deposits and payments from them, for which he had to issue receipts and record the payment for a particular vehicle.
However, in July 2010, the dealership's group auditor carried out a review of outstanding debts and found that there appeared to be £35,000 outstanding from various custo- mers.
The court heard it was found all of the customers who had been highlighted had paid in full for their cars – but some of their payments had been credited to different vehicles.
Every one of the affected customers had been dealt with by Poole, although Miss Thorp pointed out none of them were out of pocket as a result of his dishonesty.
Poole had been using payments made by one customer to pay off amounts apparently owed by another customer after he had taken some of the money he received for his own use, and had falsified the company's transaction records to cover that up.
Jane Hinds, in mitigation for Poole, who had no previous convictions, said: "The reason the offending began was because of significant debt problems."
Since Poole, who now works for a haulage firm, was dismissed in August 2010, he and his wife have been to a debt agency and made agreements to pay off their creditors.
Miss Hinds said: "This has been a time of extreme stress and anxiety for Mr Poole.
"He is deeply ashamed and deeply remorseful."
