A CROOKED funeral director jailed for stealing money relatives had paid him to bury their loved ones has been back before the court after taking items from a pub he was running.

Serial conman Christopher Westcott was jailed five years ago for stealing cash put aside by the elderly and dying for their burials when he ran Cathedral Funeral Services in Durham.

He also diverted a phone line from a rival undertaker so he could steal business from him.

Following his release from a three-and- a-half -year prison sentence Westcott, 47, turned his hand to the pub trade.

And yesterday he was sentenced at Durham Crown Court for offences of theft.

Westcott admitted the theft of more than £500 of fixtures and fittings from the Travellers Rest pub in Burnopfield, County Durham, which he ran with his partner Andrew Wright-Morrow for a few months in 2010.

Westcott, who now lives in Powlett Street, Darlington, took away £540 worth of gear from the pub in The Leazes, Burnopfield, County Durham, before quitting his job as manager there.

The items he has admitted stealing from Scottish and Newcastle Breweries included bar stools, bench seats, stools, patio doors, pictures of local scenes and a portrait of Colonel James Herbert Porter who refined the recipe for Newcastle Brown Ale.

Katherine Dunn, prosecuting, said a barmaid asked why he was removing items from the pub before leaving, and he told her he was organising a barbecue. She said: “He is clearly a dishonest man who received sentences for dishonesty.”

Ms Dunn said Westcott had been convicted in November 2005 of stealing money from grieving relatives paid to him to bury their elderly loved ones and was jailed the following year.

He had been operating Cathedral Funeral Services in Front Street, Framwellgate Moor, Durham, and advertised the firm as “a Christian organisation firmly believing in giving our best to our clients”.

But instead Westcott pocketed the cash. The sums involved ranged from between £1,125 and £1,695 which was taken from customers pre-paying by instalments for the funerals of their elderly relatives.

He has a long history of dishonesty. The conman was given a six-month jail term at Newcastle Crown Court in April, 1989, for four counts each of theft and obtaining by deception. He asked for 58 similar offences to be taken into consideration.

In August 2003, Gateshead magistrates fined him £1,200, with an order to pay £118 costs, for attempting to obtain by deception.

He was convicted at Durham Crown Court in 2003 for defrauding a former business partner in the funeral service, by setting up on his own and having that man’s phone calls diverted to Cathedral Funeral Services.

When clients asked to speak to his former partner, whom they believed they were calling, Westcott told them he was no longer in the funeral business and had instead gone to Spain to drive buses.

On that occasion he was given a 160-hour community punishment order and ordered to pay £595 compensation for two counts of obtaining by deception.

Yesterday Recorder Martin Bethel, presiding at Durham Crown Court, told Westcott: “You have a bad record for offences of dishonesty and I am reluctant to let you go scot free. This offence is another blip on your record.”

But he spared him jail after his barrister, Andrew Findlay, said he had promised to pay back all the money he had stolen from the brewery. Instead he was sentenced to a six-month community order with six months’ supervision.