A supermarket thief who stole £480 from a woman’s purse before leaving it on a shelf has been fined £200 and ordered to pay the money back.
Liubita Voichipa Cirpaca, 60, from Lurgan, Northern Ireland, appeared before Craigavon Magistrates Court charged with theft.
Cirpaca was spotted on CCTV lifting the purse from the shelf where it was left by the owner.
Police were alerted about the incident after the owner reported she lost her purse containing almost £500 on September 14 last year.
A Lidl shopper had money stolen from her wallet
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The prosecutor said: “Whilst pushing the trolley she removed the money from the purse and placed it in her bag hanging over the front of the trolley.
“The empty purse was then placed under products in a shelf.”
The defence barrister revealed the 60-year-old had no issue paying the compensation.
District Judge Francis Rafferty described the incident as “spontaneous offending and admitted”.
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The thief took the money out of the woman's purse before placing it back on a shelf (stock image)
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Rafferty decided to issue the defendant a £200 plus an offender levy with a Compensation Order of £480.
Circpaca’s conviction comes amid a rise in shoplifting offences across the UK.
England and Wales reported the highest rate for more than two decades after rising by nearly a third in a year.
Data from the Office for National Statistics revealed there were 402,482 shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales in the 12 months up to September 2023.
The crime took place at a Lidl store in Northern Ireland
PAIt was the first time the number exceeded 400,000 since records began in 2002.
The British Retail Consortium has also estimated that retail crime cost businesses £1.7billion last year.
The number of incidents was up 32 per cent compared with the 304,459 in the previous 12 months.
It even surpassed the previous high of 382,642 incidents in 2018.