A couple were today sentenced to 20 months in prison each after they were found guilty of stealing from a land speed record fund.

Ann Maria McGrath, 53, and her partner David Paul Hodgson, 46, had both denied stealing £18,126 from the Lonan Gentlemen’s Fellowship Supporters’ Club (LGFSC).

Today Deemster Main-Thompson told the Court of General Gaol Delivery that the sentence was based on evidence and the fact that neither McGrath nor Hodgson ’showed any remorse’ for their actions, but only ’self pity’.

’I find your attitude brazen, arrogant and self justifying and your responses in the witness box discourteous,’ he told the pair.

’The effect of your behaviour makes for distressing listening and reading. Upright and hard-working people have had their reputations besmirched.’

He said that they had added ’fire to the flames’ of a rumour mill within the Lonan community by not speaking up about the missing funds between 2013 and 2015. ’And this is utterly reprehensible,’ said the Deemster.

’For this serious breach of trust each you will go to prison for 20 months.’

During a 10-day trial, the court heard the couple, of Pinfold Hill, Laxey, had made various withdrawals from the fund without the committee’s approval.

These included money spent at Shoprite, money spent on ’bike parts’, which should have been claimed retrospectively, £1,300 on flights, a payment to ’Alcatraz Cruises’, a payment to a slimming products company and unidentified cash withdrawals.

There was also a £10,000 transfer to Hodgson’s account.

The couple had denied stealing the money, which had been donated by supporters and sponsors for the club’s 2014 Bonneville Speed Week challenge.

However, a jury took just an hour and a half to return guilty verdicts in late November.

McGrath and Hodgson were granted bail over the Christmas period, ahead of their sentencing.

Deemster Main-Thompson said that the pair had ’siphoned off money’ that had been raised for a good cause - some of which was kept in Hodgson’s father’s safe - and used it as their own.

Victim impact statements from Richard Barks, a committee member of the Lonan club, and Christopher Procter, the LGFSC’s vice chairman, were read out to the court this week.

Mr Procter wrote: ’We are as much victims in this as much as the people who donated money.

’What they did was despicable.’

Both highlighted the damage done to their reputation and the reputation of the Lonan Gentlemen’s Fellowship Supporters’ Club and hope that what has happened to their club will not taint other charities and schemes in the future.

Hodgson and McGrath were said to be hard-working people with years of good character and it was also recognised that the money had already been returned to the club.

However, this was not enough to spare them jail.