Former Public Transportation Board (PTB) employee Sandra Wade escaped prison time yesterday after admitting receiving $20,000 worth of stolen bus tickets.

Wade, 42, of Barrack Close, St. George's was sentenced to six months in prison suspended for 12 months, and given a $500 fine.

She had initially denied the offence ? as well as another allegation of stealing the tickets.

On July 13, however, Wade changed her not guilty plea to receiving stolen property.

At Magistrates' Court yesterday, Crown counsel Graveney Bannister gave details of the offence.

He said Police acquired a search warrant and recovered $8,000 worth of the stolen bus tickets from Wade's St. George's home on April 21.

Wade told Police she had taken stacks of tickets from the vault room at PTB, however, she claimed someone else had raided the PTB vault before she got there and that there were just eight stacks of tickets left.

Each stack of tickets is worth $1,000.

Mr. Bannister said Michelle Outerbridge-Smith gave Wade four more packets of tickets to sell.

The prosecutor said Wade and Outerbridge-Smith reached an arrangement for Wade to sell the tickets and split the profits.

Wade knew the tickets were stolen, he said.

On May 13, Outerbridge-Smith was fined $750 in Magistrates' Court for her part on the bus-ticket theft.

She escaped a prison sentence after Crown counsel Anthony Blackman said she had been very helpful in the Police investigation and had returned the tickets she had received.

Outerbridge-Smith was expected to testify against Wade in court last week.

Wade was also ordered by Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo to pay her $500 fine to PTB by way of restitution.

Defence lawyer Charles Richardson asked for time for his client to pay the fine.

"You will pay restitution to the amount of $500 in one week on July 27, or spend 50 days in prison," Mr. Tokunbo said.