Fraudster Keith Hannafee, who tricked Dartmouth's Inn Theatre Company out of £2,500, has narrowly avoided being sent to jail.

Instead, the 60-year-old has been ordered to carry out 150 hours of community service over the next year.

Hannafee, who was acting as secretary/treasurer of the am-dram group when he took the cash, was warned he could have been sent to jail as he was also ordered to pay £600 in costs within 50 days.

Inn Theatre Company manager Jane Windsor-Smith told the Chronicle that the stolen cash had since been repaid.

She said that the theatre group had been forced to axe planned birthday celebrations to mark the tenth anniversary of the team's Dartmouth Shakespeare week productions because of the missing money.

'It was bad timing because it was our tenth anniversary and we really did have plans to celebrate and because of the uncertainty of the financial situation we did not feel able to do the things we we wanted to.'

She added: 'I would like to say that it was the police who took him to court, not us. I don't really want to be unpleasant about it. I don't really have any feeling about the sentence except that it has been recognised that he did wrong.

'Hopefully it will make him more careful when he has financial dealings in the future.'

She said it was now 'all systems go' in preparing for next August's open-air production of King Lear.

Hannafee, formerly of Fairview Road, Dartmouth, but is now living in the Basingtstoke area, had been found guilty of abusing his position with the theatre company by fraudulently gaining £2,500 for himself following a day long trial at Torquay magistrates Court.

As he was sentenced last Friday, Newton Abbot magistrates told him: 'This was a very serious offence. It's so serious that a custodial sentence could have been imposed.

'You must understand that you could have gone to prison.'

The court was told at an earlier hearing that the theatre group's artistic director, Malcolm Macintosh, uncovered the deceit after checking rumours picked up in Dartmouth.

Magistrates also heard that Hannafee had previously borrowed £5,000 from the theatre company with its committee's consent and had offered to pay it off with 20 per cent interest but had not repaid any of it.

Mr Macintosh discovered that Hannafee made out a cheque for £2,500 to himself in January this year.

Hannafee told magistrates that he needed money to pay legal fees and thought he could borrow the money and then repay it.

Hannafee, who had pleaded not guilty, also told magistrates that he did not think he had done anything dishonest.