A bride who worked at a travel agents fiddled free luxury honeymoon flights to Las Vegas, tickets to Ibiza for her hen party and a trip to Australia, to "keep face" a court heard.
Mother-of-one Emma Claire Lewin, 26, was thousands of pounds in debt when she committed the frauds. Yesterday she sobbed loudly at Truro Crown Court as she walked free after admitting conning her employers out of £5,971.
Judge Graham Cottle gave her a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and a two-year supervision order.
He said: "This is a very serious breach of trust.
"These were luxury items, not the necessities of life. They were the luxuries of life and that's a very serious aggravating feature."
Lewin, of Treruffe Hill, Redruth, Cornwall, had been employed as an assistant manager at First Choice travel agents at Camborne.
She pleaded guilty yesterday to, on June 1, 2011, dishonestly obtaining a flight to Ibiza for herself and eight other people, knowing that it had not been paid for.
Two of the women worked with her.
The court heard that when Lewin's crimes came to light her work colleagues initially fell under suspicion but were found to be innocent.
Lewin also admitted that on June 21, 2011, she dishonestly obtained a flight to Australia for Tamsyn Lewin, her sister-in-law, when payment had not been secured.
She also confessed to dishonestly obtaining a flight on June 22 that year for her and her husband, again knowing it had not been paid for.
Initially prosecutors had charged her with further three counts of falsifying an account – namely with the Travel Agency RAPID IT system which the industry uses to book flights – over the same period.
Yesterday Lewin, who had no previous convictions, pleaded not guilty to the trio of counts, which the Crown accepted. Judge Cottle returned not guilty verdicts on all of them.
Following preparation of a pre-sentence report, a probation officer told the court that Lewin had £13,000 of debt and added: "This is a young woman who seems to have a real need to please people and wants to keep face."
Lewin's father Peter, who works at Crown Estates, gave evidence and said he would repay the money.
He said: "I had an inkling she was in debt, but had no idea how out of control things had got."