A THIEF who crossed the country to target York people in pubs on New Year's Eve is now serving 30 weeks in jail.

Nirix Stanescu, 19, of Oldham in Lancashire worked with a 17-year-old girl to distract pubgoers and snatch their mobile phones, York magistrates heard.

Kathryn Reeve, prosecuting, said the victims realised what was going on in time for police to stop the pair as they headed back east along the A59.

Stanescu pleaded guilty to two thefts committed in Cross Keys pub, Tadcaster Road, and Brewdog, Micklegate on December 31 and was jailed for 26 weeks.

The sentence will be served as she completes a 26-week sentence imposed four weeks earlier by Derby magistrates for five similar offences.

The 17-year-old, also of Oldham, was given a 12-month referral order, the maximum possible, by district judge Adrian Lower in February for a catalogue of crime.

She admitted the two York thefts, plus theft of a bank card on the same day, plus shoplifting and burgling a shop staff room, both in York on November 17. She had previously admitted six mobile phone thefts and a shop burglary, in York on November 23 and other phone thefts and offences in Manchester.

For Stanescu, who is Rumanian, Raj Chopra said she came to the UK in August or September and couldn't work because she didn't speak English and couldn't claim benefits. She needed money for her 30-month old son in Istanbul, who needed an operation on his lungs.

Ms Reeve said the two thieves offered to sell cakes to a woman sitting in the Cross Keys with her husband at 2.30pm on December 31 The couple declined to buy cakes and as the thieves left, the victim realised they had taken her phone.

Another woman had her phone stolen in a similar manner in Brewdog.

But the thieves were seen getting into a silver Mazda and when police stopped it on the A59, they found both mobile phones.

Both Derby and York magistrates declared Stanescu had to be jailed because the thefts were pre-planned, involved high value items whose loss caused considerable problems for their owners and she had committed them with a 17-year-old and travelled long distances to commit them.