Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Mum was caught in store using fake Scottish £50 notes
Exclusive
A mum of two was busted with a handbag full of fake £50 notes after using one to buy lip-liner at Fenwick.
Stacy Billingham, 31, was carrying £700 in counterfeit Scottish currency when she tried to scam the city centre department store.
But she came unstuck because the “crisp new” notes were so obviously fake, with each carrying the same serial number and no watermark or hologram.
Remarkably, she had managed to use one to buy £10.98 worth of goods at Boots before moving onto Fenwick, where her luck ran out.
A police officer was called to the store and Billingham admitted she had a stash of the notes in her bag,
She at first claimed her Scottish grandmother had them to her, but later admitted that was a lie.
Then she claimed she found the money and had decided to spend it, before changing her story yet again.
Her final claim was she met a man – who she refused to name – on an internet dating site and he persuaded her to travel from her home in Essex to Canterbury on a shopping spree.
Billingham, described as “very naive”, said that once the couple arrived in the city, the man gave her the cash and told her they should meet up 90 minutes later.
At her trial in front of magistrates, she denied three counterfeit charges but was convicted and sent to Canterbury Crown Court for sentence.
Her lawyer, Tom Williams, said Billingham, who is on state benefits, “had done something stupid rather than been calculating”.
“It is the last time she is going to behave in this way,” he added.
Mr Williams handed the judge three personal references in which the defendant was described by family and friends as “a loving mother and daughter who was kind and thoughtful”.
She was given a 10-month jail sentence suspended for 18 months and ordered to stay indoors between 10pm and 6am for the next month.
The judge, Recorder Dextor Dias QC, told her: “You had a real shock. I am going to give you a chance.”
The prosecutor told the judge the confiscated notes would be returned to the Bank of Scotland and then destroyed.