[T]WO women who targeted small South Cumbria shops with fake £20 notes have each been jailed for 10 months.
Katy Lauren Bolshaw and Mairead Teresa Fitzgerald were said to have chosen the Kendal area as an “easy target” for their criminal expedition on September 21 last year.
Fitzgerald, 44, acted as the driver as 29-year-old Bolshaw entered a host of small businesses and attempted to pay for modest items with the counterfeit cash.
Three bogus £20 notes were handed over, although Bolshaw was forced to make a hasty retreat as staff at a number of other stores identified the copies.
These, Carlisle Crown Court heard, had no magnetic strip and foil, nor a watermark.
As the pair were detained in the Windermere area, an envelope stuffed with almost £800 dodgy notes was recovered from their vehicle. So, too, was cash which will be used to compensate the businesses which lost out.
Bolshaw, of Tarnside Drive, Seacroft, and Fitzgerald, of Skelton Avenue, Osmondthorpe, both Leeds, admitted conspiracy to pass counterfeit notes and having them with intent to do so.
Jailing the pair, Judge Barbara Forrester concluded: “It was a deliberate trip to defraud local businesses.”
