Credit card cheat jailed (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Credit card cheat jailed

Credit card cheat Steven Gravelle was caught after store detectives spotted him buying a £100 watch without properly looking at it.

And after they arrested the crook, police found he had run up almost £2,500 on the stolen plastic in 38 transactions over three days.

Philip Warren, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court how the 23-year-old's eagerness to cheat the store led to his downfall as he was watched on CCTV.

"The defendant was in Debenham's in Swindon when he was watched on video buying a watch," Mr Warren said. "He bought the watch with so perfunctory inspection that they were suspicious that he was not a genuine customer.

"The cashier was telephoned and told to withhold the card and security moved in. The defendant was stopped outside Tesco's and identified as the person from the video."

He said that it was discovered that Gravelle had already used the card in the store twice that day to buy a clock for £100 and a games console for £99.99 and had both items with him in bags.

When he was questioned he told police that he had been brought from his home in Neath, South Wales, to Swindon by a man who gave him the card. He had also been provided with a list of stores to use the card at, and how much to spend on a number of items in each establishment.

Mr Warren said that such a list was found on the defendant and it said he was to get four things from Debenham's to the value of £400. Gravelle said that he would hand over the goods to the man who had provided him with the card who would sell them for half their value and he would get half of that.

When the card's usage was examined it was found to have been tendered 36 times on the previous two days in September last year at stores in Exeter, Taunton and Weston super Mare.

Gravelle, of Exchange Road, Neath, pleaded guilty to two counts of deception, one of attempted deception and handling stolen goods and asked for 36 other deceptions to be taken into consideration. The court heard that he had a number of previous convictions for similar matters including identical offences in Wales a few days later. He also failed to surrender to bail claiming on one occasion that he had fallen asleep on the train and missed the stop.

Andrew Hobson, defend-ing, said that his client had tried to knuckle down to working in the time since the offences and had never tasted prison before.

Spending three weeks on remand in custody had been a sobering experience, he said, and taught him that he didn't want to go back.

He said that his client didn't empathise with the victims of crimes of deception and would be helped by probation courses in the community.

But jailing him for 15 months, Judge Tom Longbotham said: "You have shown on a number of occasions that you are a dishonest man.

"You have had your chances and blown them. I am told by Mr Hobson you simply don't understand that the victims of these crimes suffer considerably the loser of the card, retail stores and the general public suffers."

Gareth Bethell