A MOTHER offered fake bank notes at a Worcester shop after she got into financial trouble because her partner was jailed.

Carrie-Anne Bridges was spared jail after offering four counterfeit £20 notes at Primark in Worcester partly because she is a mother with three children.

However, she was warned by a judge if she got in trouble again this would not stop her being put behind bars.

The 21-year-old admitted tendering counterfeit currency but was spared an immediate jail sentence at Worcester Crown Court on Monday following the incident on November 8 last year.

Blondelle Thompson, prosecuting, said Bridges had convictions for shoplifting dating back to May 2015 when she was a youth.

Amiee Parkes, defending, said it was a serious offence and a custodial sentence had to be imposed but asked that it be suspended, saying the defendant had a 12 week old son with a heart murmur.

Her client had accepted she knew or reasonably knew or suspected that the notes were counterfeit.

Judge Jim Tindal said Bridges had been committing offences of shoplifting at ‘some pace’ when she was younger.

“It was hoped, and I’m sure you hoped, you having a child would have meant you put that behind you and you did for two years” he said.

The judge said she had been honest to the probation officer ‘having not told the entire truth to the police’.

Bridges, of Nelson Road, Stourport, found herself in financial trouble because her partner was remanded in custody and ‘borrowed the money off a family friend which you should have realised was counterfeit’ the judge said.

He added: “There has to be some measure of deterrence which shows to people they can’t go around using counterfeit notes.”

The judge suspended the sentence on the grounds she was responsible for children and had been honest with the probation officer.

He sentenced her to six months in prison suspended for two years and ordered her complete a programme requirement any 40 rehabilitation activity requirement days which he told her was ‘a much more serious sentence than the one you had before’.

Judge Tindal said: “If you breach that sentence by not co-operating with probation or committing an offence within the next two years you will be back to court and, young children or not, you will be sent to prison. Is that clear?”

Bridges answered ‘yes’. He ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the counterfeit bank notes.

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