Leeds drug addict travelled to Powys and stole £1,000 from pharmacies to fund habit
A drug addict planned a trip to Powys from Yorkshire in a bid to steal £1,000 worth of pharmaceutical products to fund her habit.
Karen House, of Stanks Drive, Leeds, West Yorkshire, persuaded a man to drive her down to pharmacies in Builth Wells and then Llanidloes, before stealing tablets and make up.
She was spotted and stopped on her way back through Montgomeryshire.
The 40-year-old admitted the charges when she appeared via video link at Welshpool Magistrates Court from prison.
She is already serving a 26-week prison sentence, and earlier in the morning she appeared on video at court on Bradford, where she received a further 18 week prison sentence for another matter.
Prosecutor Helen Tench said a butcher who worked opposite Boots Chemist in Builth Wells spotted a woman acting suspiciously on the morning of January 7.
She had two bags over her shoulder and a scarf over the top of the bags.
He saw her putting boxes in her bag, before leaving the store and getting into a car with two men.
Before she left, the butcher photographed the car.
The chemist in Llanidloes was 30 miles away, which took around 45 minutes to get to and police said the timings fitted into the time frame between the two thefts.
House was spotted in the store by a member of staff, who said she looked suspicious.
The member of staff checked the CCTV and it showed House putting items into her bag and covering it with a scarf.
She was arrested and refused to answer in her police interviews.
The items recovered in the car when she was stopped amounted to over £1,000 worth of goods.
£915 worth were stolen in Llanidloes and £126 in Builth Wells.
Mike Davies, defending, said his client was from a travelling family and she had an “habitual record of shoplifting.”
He told the court that his client stole the the items to fund her drug habit, and she hoped to address that habit in prison.
He added these were unsophisticated acts of shop lifting.
Magistrates jailed House for three weeks for the incident in Builth Wells and for six weeks for the Llanidloes theft, to run consecutively with her current jail term.
