A senior regional Ukrainian post office official stole money set aside for pension and social assistance payments and frittered it away on online casino sites.
Per an official court announcement, the Tyachiv District Court in Zakarpattia ordered an unnamed female Ukrposhta employee to serve two years of probation.
Prosecution officials told the court the woman stole the money in September 2022. She used official Ukrposhta access codes to transfer small amounts of money to her own card over a 10-day period.
The woman then used all of this money to gamble online. She later filed a police report, claiming someone had stolen the money from the post office’s cash register.
Ukrainian Post Office Worker Sorry for Stealing Money
The woman eventually admitted to the crime, confessing that her gambling habits had driven her into debt. She has since repaid the money to Ukrposhta, which initially covered the losses.
In sentencing, the presiding judge said the court had taken her “sincere remorse” into account. The judge added that she had no prior criminal record and was the mother of two children.
The court also banned her from holding positions involving financial responsibility and managerial functions for two years. It also fined her 6,800 hryvnia, worth $155.
Gambling-Addicted Dance Instructor Stole Money From Parents
The Zakarpattia development comes just days after a court in Ukraine’s Cherkasy Oblast handed a children’s dance instructor a five-year suspended jail sentence for embezzling money from parents to gamble online.
The court heard that Viktoria Kalashnik, the coach of a children’s ensemble named Nadezhda, was the offender, Ukrainian media outlet Glavcom reported.
In February 2025, Nadezhda won a dance contest and subsequently received an invitation to attend an international festival in Batumi, Georgia.
Kalashnik took charge of organizing the trip and, in April, began collecting money from parents. A total of 26 families handed her 1,181,061 hryvnia, worth around $27,000.
But the parents began to grow suspicious about Kalashnik’s behavior. The coach “repeatedly rescheduled the trip and never showed them travel tickets,” said prosecutors.
The parents eventually visited Kalashnik’s home, where the instructor confessed to losing the money.
During the trial, Kalashnik again admitted to losing the money and said that she suffered from pathological gambling addiction.
“I won on my first visit to an online casino,” she told the court. “After that, I couldn’t stop. I lost my own money and my parents’ cash, too.”
Ahead of the trial, Kalashnik partially compensated the parents, paying back around $3,000.
A branch of the Sosnovsky District Court found Kalashnik guilty of large-scale fraud and suspended her jail sentence for three years.
The presiding judge also ordered Kalashnik to pay financial compensation and moral damages fines totaling $27,300.
Earlier this year, PlayCity, Ukraine’s gambling regulator, hit the operator of the sports betting and online slots brand Betking, Slots UA, with a $10,000 fine.
PlayCity said Slots UA failed to provide financial data “in a timely manner.”
The regulator has also recently revoked the license of the Cosmolot online casino operator Spaceiks.
