A BOUNDARY Mill administrator who helped himself to about £30,000 of his bosses' cash was today starting a 15-months jail term.

Burnley Crown Court heard how James Crabtree, 20, a former 'Saturday boy' at the Colne firm, at first started taking cash to get himself a house.

But when police searched his home, they found an Aladdin's Cave of consumer goods -- including computers and golf clubs --bought with the spoils and more than £1,000 in cash.

Sentencing the defendant, once a boarder at Lancaster Grammar School, Assistant Recorder David Hernandez said he had breached his employers' trust, exploited weaknesses in the accounting system.

The judge told Crabtree, who had recently lost his mother, that testimonials described him as an intelligent man with potential and of exemplary character, but only custody could be justified.

Crabtree, of Berkeley Street, Nelson, earlier admitted theft, between August 1998 and October 1999. He had no previous convictions.

Kendal Lindley, prosecuting, said Crabtree worked in the cash office at Boundary Mill, which had such an enormous turnover that the offence did not come to light immediately.

He said Last October, a staff member noted a large number of price tickets in the defendant's rucksack and alerted the manager, who was not given a satisfactory explanation.

Mark Stuart, defending, said Crabtree had done well at school academically and on the sports field and then went on to St Theodore's in Burnley, when his parents split up.

He worked his way up from Saturday boy to cash office administrator and decided not to go to university at the time as his mother, with whom he then lived, was ill. He then went to live with his father and wanted to move, but was unable to afford his own accommodation.

The defendant started to take money and once he did so, almost could not help himself. His mother died last October aged 49, Crabtree was devastated, seemed to have been living in dream world and took even more money.

He was deeply ashamed of his actions and wanted to apologise to his former colleagues at Boundary Mill.