A shopkeeper who had £766,000 accidentally deposited into his bank account has been jailed after spending some of the money.

Sandeep Singh, from Leicester, bought a house with a portion of the money and transferred around £80,000 to India, a court heard.

In excess of £260,000 was taken from the account, while half a million pounds was still in the account when the error was spotted, the Birmingham Mail reports.

ATM company DC Payments wrongly credited Mr Singh’s account over a two-year period with payments actually meant for Rubicon Casino in Wolverhampton.

Judge Nicholas Dean QC said: “It’s clear to me you’ve been a hardworking man and done the best by your family. But you’ve left yourself and them down.”

He added: “You must have realised quite quickly payments were being made that ought not to have been.

“The efforts you made to contact them were desultory; it would be very simple to inform a company of this type of error.”

He was jailed for 12 months after admitting theft between October 2014 and October 2016.