A MAN who carried out a camcorder sting on a family in Blackburn has been given a 12-month jail sentence.
The prison term will run at the same time as a three-year sentence recently handed down by a court in London on Peter McDonagh for a burglary.
Preston Crown Court heard that he offered to sell a camcorder to a family out shopping. However, the contents of a box were switched and the buyers later discovered their money had paid for four tins of baked beans.
McDonagh, 24, more recently from the Oxford area, had been committed by magistrates for sentencing at the higher court after admitting obtaining property by deception.
Saima Bhat, defending, said that around that time, McDonagh had been addicted to heroin and cocaine. The deception had been fairly low level.
She said the defendant had now lost three brothers -- the third death was the subject of a forthcoming murder trial. The previous two deaths were both separate road traffic incidents.
The judge, Recorder Andrew Nuttall, said it had been a mean offence within a month of his release from prison.
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