A WOMAN who sold fake Gucci and Playboy jewellery on a stall in York Hospital has been ordered to do 60 hours of community service.

Nadia Arsen Andonian, 51, admitted selling the fake goods after they were spotted by City of York Council trading standards officers who made test purchases from the stall.

Ms Andonian ran the stall one day each month in the foyer of York Hospital and said she had bought the fake items, which had a sale value of £6,000, in good faith.

In mitigation, Hannah Wood said her client had got the items from two wholesale warehouses in Manchester who told her the goods were not copies but “brand-inspired”.

She added: “The goods were sold at a relatively low price and a majority of the items on the stall were legitimate. This was the first and only time she had stocked these goods.

“She is an honest and hard-working individual who donates money to charity.” It also emerged Ms Andonian, of Givendale Drive, Manchester, had suffered from severe depression as well as having to care for her elderly mother and the case had proved to be “an agonising time for her”.

Sentencing her to 60 hours unpaid work, the chairwoman of the bench, Margaret Scott, told her they had taken into account her good record and early guilty plea. She was also ordered to pay £650 costs.

After the hearing, Matt Boxall, of City of York Council’s Trading Standards team, said: “Trading Standards receive lots of complaints from businesses about the sale of fake goods and how it harms their business. The sale of fake goods is estimated to cost the UK economy £1.3 billion per year; it is big business. Every pound that is spent on fake goods is a pound that isn’t spent in the legitimate economy in some way, shape or form. The magistrates have imposed penalties that send out a clear message that the sale of fake goods is totally unacceptable.”