A “FEMALE Fagin” has been jailed for five months for using young children to steal from a shop.

Two small girls dressed in pale blue pyjamas took packs of washing powder while Margaret Price who has also used the name Margaret Nicholson took a pair of shears, cleaning fluid and other items at the BATA store in Carlton near Selby, said Anthony Moore, prosecuting at York Crown Court.

Immediately before the thefts, Price, who was wearing a pink dressing gown, sent the store assistant to get horse feed from the store’s warehouse. But after she had left with the children, he realised what had happened and alerted police.

Price was on a suspended prison sentence for defrauding a 81-year-old socially isolated man out of thousands of pounds.

Mr Moore said Price, a married woman, had got engaged to the victim, and she, her husband and another woman persuaded him to hand over £1,000 for an engagement ring and £7,000 for a new bathroom worth £2,500.

Talking about the theft at BATA, the Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Batty QC, said: “It was very serious. You were in fact acting as a female Fagin.”

He jailed her for three months, plus two months from the suspended prison sentence.

York Press:

Price, 30, of Lynwith Lane Caravan Site, Lynwith Lane, Carlton, pleaded guilty to theft at 10am on October 20, but denied using the children as thieves. She claimed under oath that she had not sent them into the shop to steal and had not seen or known anything about their crime until she was driving away and an adult friend in the car told her. The judge said he didn’t believe her.

For her Richard Minion cared for her mother, who has lung cancer, and no other relatives live on the same caravan site.

She had accepted responsibility as soon as the police found her the same day as the crime at the caravan site.

Price said in the witness box that she had a son and a daughter aged five and six with her and her friend had brought her two children as well. She also told a probation officer the children in the shop were not hers, but under oath that one was hers and one was her friend’s.