Teen stole £4,000 from grandmother

Charli Isabel Bettley (19) appeared before Mansfield Magistrates’ Courton Wednesday, 29th January, charged with two counts of theft and two counts of fraud.

Bettley stole a total of £3,802 on the card which she stole from Janet Bettley on 16th September last year, the court heard.

She was also charged with committing fraud on 17th and 19th September but the court was asked to take a further 24 offences into consideration.

She also admitted stealing a mobile phone from a patient at King’s Mill Hospital while she was an in-patient on 15th October.

Prosecuting, Robert Carr said: “She admitted taking her grandmother’s card and basically frittering the money away.

“Her grandmother says that this betrayal has crushed her. It has made her husband ill and she no longer has the money set aside that she thought she had.”

Bettley started using drugs after starting a relationship with an addict and immediately became a user herself, the court heard.

She made numerous visits to cash machines with her former boyfriend and spent the cash on drugs, as well as sports clothing and cinema tickets for her boyfriend’s family, the court heard.

Defence lawyers said that Bettley was now clean and was a resident at a community church in Nottingham, where she was being supported to beat her drugs habit.

She was sentenced to 16 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, and told she must live at the church for the next six months.